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A review by alexdr
Things I Don't Want to Know by Deborah Levy
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Levy memoir works occupy a strange place in my heart. Strung between lovers but also notable to my roommate as epitomical of my apparently feminine reading taste.
Dad says that comments that package themselves as benign but touch the subconscious always stick with you. I lack something requisite for accessing the depth of Levy’s work at the moment but both my roommates comment, past lovers and the book itself have touched something blatantly subconscious.
Things I don’t want to know above all reminded me of the entrails of my interiority I had left in a rarely vacuumed hallway on Napier St. When I first met Dash he told me he admired my taste. Not for similarity or association with some value set but for its particularity. Ironically my taste in art has always born a nebulous hazy - occasionally twee - quality that helps me find something about myself. Sometimes I picture the affect as a woman riding a bicycle. The balance of tenderness and severity with which Levy speaks of her own interiority reminds me both of this feeling and where I have lost it in the year past.
I want a little more from this book but I didn’t bring it with me hiking so I expect another reading will have to wait till around my birthday (oh dear).
Dad says that comments that package themselves as benign but touch the subconscious always stick with you. I lack something requisite for accessing the depth of Levy’s work at the moment but both my roommates comment, past lovers and the book itself have touched something blatantly subconscious.
Things I don’t want to know above all reminded me of the entrails of my interiority I had left in a rarely vacuumed hallway on Napier St. When I first met Dash he told me he admired my taste. Not for similarity or association with some value set but for its particularity. Ironically my taste in art has always born a nebulous hazy - occasionally twee - quality that helps me find something about myself. Sometimes I picture the affect as a woman riding a bicycle. The balance of tenderness and severity with which Levy speaks of her own interiority reminds me both of this feeling and where I have lost it in the year past.
I want a little more from this book but I didn’t bring it with me hiking so I expect another reading will have to wait till around my birthday (oh dear).
Content Warnings
Graphic: Classism, Xenophobia, and Racism