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A review by wetherspoonsgf
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
Did not finish book. Stopped at 50%.
This book seemed like it would be a fun ‘no plot just vibes’ deal but it just fucking sucks.
Deborah Levy doesn’t seem to understand that isolating a witticism or a pithy emotional observation in a short 2 sentence paragraph doesn’t make it profound, and doing this twice a page doesn’t make you even profound-er. Even more so, she doesn’t seem to realise that having your main character go ‘hmm this would make a good phd’ at ideas that are obviously Deborah Levy’s and not the character’s is deeply masturbatory and awful to read.
Also, and I don’t know or care what the outcome of this is in the plot, laying the foundations of ‘someone is faking a disability’ through the logic of ‘some days they can walk some days they can’t’ is boring and ableist, and running a through line of ‘gender is mutable because this spanish man is feminine and this german lesbian is mannish’ is boring and homophobic.
Her central metaphor of bathroom signs has aged so badly it’s now hilarious, and that’s the only positive I have about this book - it’s funny that this character meditates on identity via bathroom signs (it’s much less funny that she does what reads [today] as out and out transphobic panic and goes completely uncriticised by character or author for doing so).
I was going to try and finish this just so I could rate it 1 star rather than let it get away with a dnf, but it was making me Not Read, so count yourself lucky, Hot Milk. The blurb promises that in 2015 Levy was writing a (second) essay on gender politics, I hope the manuscript got lost in the post.
Deborah Levy doesn’t seem to understand that isolating a witticism or a pithy emotional observation in a short 2 sentence paragraph doesn’t make it profound, and doing this twice a page doesn’t make you even profound-er. Even more so, she doesn’t seem to realise that having your main character go ‘hmm this would make a good phd’ at ideas that are obviously Deborah Levy’s and not the character’s is deeply masturbatory and awful to read.
Also, and I don’t know or care what the outcome of this is in the plot, laying the foundations of ‘someone is faking a disability’ through the logic of ‘some days they can walk some days they can’t’ is boring and ableist, and running a through line of ‘gender is mutable because this spanish man is feminine and this german lesbian is mannish’ is boring and homophobic.
Her central metaphor of bathroom signs has aged so badly it’s now hilarious, and that’s the only positive I have about this book - it’s funny that this character meditates on identity via bathroom signs (it’s much less funny that she does what reads [today] as out and out transphobic panic and goes completely uncriticised by character or author for doing so).
I was going to try and finish this just so I could rate it 1 star rather than let it get away with a dnf, but it was making me Not Read, so count yourself lucky, Hot Milk. The blurb promises that in 2015 Levy was writing a (second) essay on gender politics, I hope the manuscript got lost in the post.