Monday, July 3, 2017

Hot Milk by Deborah Levy


“My love for my mother is like an axe. It cuts very deep.”

This book demanded attention. It was powerful and intense, and even though I found it to be lacking in direction and the dialog to be to constructed and unnatural, it was hypnotic.

It is an unusual mother daughter story and nothing really happens, but it’s not about the events taking place – it’s more about the inner life and struggle of being lost within your own mind. And Sofia most certainly is.

She follows her hypochondriac mother to a special treatment clinic in Spain and with the backdrop of beautiful beaches and blue skies she observes the world around her and tries to find a place in it. She’s a strange yet very relatable character with this apathetic and numb mind that I understand and recognize myself in. As a young woman myself also not using the degree I fought for, this book painfully reminded me of what I don’t want to be.


To be honest, so many things in this book didn’t make sense to me and I'm sure the symbolic meanings passed me by. But even though that was the case this quick read has stayed with me and I keep thinking about it. It makes me want to read it all over again.


Title: Hot Milk
Author: Deborah Levy
Pages: 218
Series: Stand alone
Source: Purchased
Published: July 12th 2016

Plot
I have been sleuthing my mother's symptoms for as long as I can remember. If I see myself as an unwilling detective with a desire for justice, is her illness an unsolved crime? If so, who is the villain and who is the victim?

Sofia, a young anthropologist, has spent much of her life trying to solve the mystery of her mother's unexplainable illness. She is frustrated with Rose and her constant complaints, but utterly relieved to be called to abandon her own disappointing fledgling adult life. She and her mother travel to the searing, arid coast of southern Spain to see a famous consultant—their very last chance—in the hope that he might cure her unpredictable limb paralysis.

But Dr. Gomez has strange methods that seem to have little to do with physical medicine, and as the treatment progresses, Sofia's mother's illness becomes increasingly baffling. Sofia's role as detective—tracking her mother's symptoms in an attempt to find the secret motivation for her pain—deepens as she discovers her own desires in this transient desert community.

Hot Milk is a profound exploration of the sting of sexuality, of unspoken female rage, of myth and modernity, the lure of hypochondria and big pharma, and, above all, the value of experimenting with life; of being curious, bewildered, and vitally alive to the world.

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