What do you think?
Rate this book
Beautiful Mutants
The author presents a modern morality tale in which a magical Russian exile named Lapinski employs a number of lost pilgrims to expound upon modern-day emotional and geographic displacement
96 pages, Hardcover
First published May 15, 1989
25 people are currently reading
1115 people want to read
About the author
Deborah Levy
65 books3,697 followersDeborah Levy trained at Dartington College of Arts leaving in 1981 to write a number of plays, highly acclaimed for their "intellectual rigour, poetic fantasy and visual imagination", including PAX, HERESIES for the Royal Shakespeare Company, CLAM, CALL BLUE JANE, SHINY NYLON, HONEY BABY MIDDLE ENGLAND, PUSHING THE PRINCE INTO DENMARK and MACBETH-FALSE MEMORIES, some of which are published in LEVY: PLAYS 1 (Methuen)
Deborah wrote and published her first novel BEAUTIFUL MUTANTS (Vintage), when she was 27 years old. The experience of not having to give her words to a director, actors and designer to interpret, was so exhilarating, she wrote a few more. These include, SWALLOWING GEOGRAPHY, THE UNLOVED (Vintage) and BILLY and GIRL (Bloomsbury). She has always written across a number of art forms (see Bookworks and Collaborations with visual artists) and was Fellow in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1989-1991.
Deborah wrote and published her first novel BEAUTIFUL MUTANTS (Vintage), when she was 27 years old. The experience of not having to give her words to a director, actors and designer to interpret, was so exhilarating, she wrote a few more. These include, SWALLOWING GEOGRAPHY, THE UNLOVED (Vintage) and BILLY and GIRL (Bloomsbury). She has always written across a number of art forms (see Bookworks and Collaborations with visual artists) and was Fellow in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1989-1991.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
June 20, 2023
"I think its the stench of ..... otherness."
Last year, I was reading Hot Milk, I had just finished perhaps the first chapter in my room, when rang the bell on the door. I went outside and found an old oppo of mine surprisingly there. We hugged each other and went for a walk, Our 'walk the talk' was so arresting in nature that since that day I could not come back to this room so the 'Hot Milk' is still brewing on my table half opened... And A scene of the beach from that book, still brewing in my eyes!
I will read that book completely sometime soon, but today I got this book and see, I read it, ninety-odd pages! It was a clawback moment for me, the tax was fully redeemed!
In my short interaction with 'Hot Milk,' I was impressed by Deborah's writing. 'Beautiful Mutatnts' was the first novella of the author and it is said that she wrote it when she was 27. I liked this book for its strange newness for me. It is humourous; dark humor you can say. The writing style is quite different and I enjoyed it. In many places, I grinned reading a sentence or a paragraph. Indeed it happened so many times. If this book is not extraordinary, It's definitely not mediocre. A bold and provocative debut attempt by the author!
" I will tell you something about Lapinski. When she gets a gas bill, she writes all over it with a thick black felt tip, THIS DOES NOT EXIST' and sends it to the gas board. Her eyebrows meet in the middle."
Lapinski is a Russian exile, and she does not talk straight. She creates stories and also creates fun. characters of this novel speak in a language that is not less than a riddle and Levy has been able to make them very interesting in her first book. This author has filled with me curiosity to peek into more of her works, I guess!
Leaving you with some lines, these lines gave me a chortle, a gleeful laugh!
"At the beach, we stare at each other through a hole in a stone. We suck all the fear from each other's eyes and then we look away. He sings,
In a fishing boat
when the light turns blue
you burgled me
and I burgled you."
February 8, 2021
Stunning, incredibly well-written, disjointed, but ultimately wonderful.
February 19, 2023
On this we can agree: Deborah Levy writes beautifully. Her command of language is awe-inspiring. She is also fearless, imaginative, and prolific. All of these things reward intrepid readers and are praiseworthy.
This, however, was not the book for me. Not remotely. There are atmospheric passages that draw one in and promise a new and elevated literary experience, but these are soon followed by more gobbledygook.
When the world is eaten, we take the soldiers out of my hair and bury them under a spindly sapling trying to grow in a crack in the pavement. A little boy makes a wreath out of his milkshake carton. Two lovers kiss on the grave, a small city-dance of leather and suede. I think of my father and mother and how they made love on the slab of a war memorial - perhaps it is the shame of the same species murdering each other so often that demands an affirmation of life, murdering each other in the heart, lung, arm, head, thigh, groin.
I found the alternating Tease and Buzz Kill unpleasant. 2.5 stars
This, however, was not the book for me. Not remotely. There are atmospheric passages that draw one in and promise a new and elevated literary experience, but these are soon followed by more gobbledygook.
When the world is eaten, we take the soldiers out of my hair and bury them under a spindly sapling trying to grow in a crack in the pavement. A little boy makes a wreath out of his milkshake carton. Two lovers kiss on the grave, a small city-dance of leather and suede. I think of my father and mother and how they made love on the slab of a war memorial - perhaps it is the shame of the same species murdering each other so often that demands an affirmation of life, murdering each other in the heart, lung, arm, head, thigh, groin.
I found the alternating Tease and Buzz Kill unpleasant. 2.5 stars
November 16, 2016
"The Poet smells of cashew nuts and cologne. She drinks tea from a transparent cup of cheap rose-coloured glass and says, 'This is the age of the migrant and the missile, Lapinski. In some ways you could say our time has come.' She laughs and her gold teeth rattle. Her hands are raw from making frozen hamburgers which is her job.
...
The Poet requests another cup of tea and a Jammie Dodger, a biscuit she is partial to way before and after the acceptable age to like Jammie Dodgers, those ages being seven and seventy."
Beautiful Mutants was Deborah Levy's debut novel, published in 1987, when she was in her late 20s.
It's a short (100 pages) but powerful work, unsettling and darkly humourous, fragmentary and best read without worrying too much about what is actually happening or where the story is going.
Lapinski is from Russia ("my mother was the ice-skating champion of Moscow") sent to the UK after her mother died by her grandmother ("survivor of many a pogrom and collector of coffee lace handkerchiefs"). The novel is narrated by her and an eclectic collection of friends and acquaintances both oddly real and, at the same time, allegorical: The Poet (a much-travelled emigre from the Middle East, now a factory worker); her fellow worker Saint Martha; The Banker, a childhood friend of Lapinski now pursuing a successful career in high finance; Eduardo, the Bankers' husband; Freddie, lover to both Lapinski and the Banker; Lapinski's unnamed upstairs neighbour who lives with his dog and a rubber doll; Tremor, a prostitute he frequents; The Anorexic Anarchist ("It is she who plays only those notes forbidden by the Catholic Church in the days of of the inquisition."); The Innocents, a young boy and a girl; a women with a broken Chinese umbrella; and a talking llama at London Zoo (which is later burnt to the ground by the Banker in a memorable set piece).
To the extent there is a discernable themes, it is both displacement, particularly of those who cross borders in search of work or refuge, and also a reaction to the prosperous materalism that characterised late 1980s Britain:
"No no no, Lapinski ... I will not let you be an autocrat. I will break the pattern of your summoning which I hear through my diseased cherry tree that refuses to bloom in this time of the accountant, prison warder, soldier, in this time where our common land is used to store nuclear icons, and battery chickens become golden nuggets in boxes that the destroy the air we breathe. In this time when pigs become lumps of sorrow soaked in preservatives and people register their personal decay in solitary massacres ... yes I will break the pattern of your summoning. I will sow the seeds of chaos and disorder about your shoes, both left and right. I have a cake baking in the oven, can you smell the vanilla?"
Definitely worth reading for the early glimpses of the accomplished writer Levy would become, although ultimately I'm glad she evolved to that one, rather than remained in this raw state.
...
The Poet requests another cup of tea and a Jammie Dodger, a biscuit she is partial to way before and after the acceptable age to like Jammie Dodgers, those ages being seven and seventy."
Beautiful Mutants was Deborah Levy's debut novel, published in 1987, when she was in her late 20s.
It's a short (100 pages) but powerful work, unsettling and darkly humourous, fragmentary and best read without worrying too much about what is actually happening or where the story is going.
Lapinski is from Russia ("my mother was the ice-skating champion of Moscow") sent to the UK after her mother died by her grandmother ("survivor of many a pogrom and collector of coffee lace handkerchiefs"). The novel is narrated by her and an eclectic collection of friends and acquaintances both oddly real and, at the same time, allegorical: The Poet (a much-travelled emigre from the Middle East, now a factory worker); her fellow worker Saint Martha; The Banker, a childhood friend of Lapinski now pursuing a successful career in high finance; Eduardo, the Bankers' husband; Freddie, lover to both Lapinski and the Banker; Lapinski's unnamed upstairs neighbour who lives with his dog and a rubber doll; Tremor, a prostitute he frequents; The Anorexic Anarchist ("It is she who plays only those notes forbidden by the Catholic Church in the days of of the inquisition."); The Innocents, a young boy and a girl; a women with a broken Chinese umbrella; and a talking llama at London Zoo (which is later burnt to the ground by the Banker in a memorable set piece).
To the extent there is a discernable themes, it is both displacement, particularly of those who cross borders in search of work or refuge, and also a reaction to the prosperous materalism that characterised late 1980s Britain:
"No no no, Lapinski ... I will not let you be an autocrat. I will break the pattern of your summoning which I hear through my diseased cherry tree that refuses to bloom in this time of the accountant, prison warder, soldier, in this time where our common land is used to store nuclear icons, and battery chickens become golden nuggets in boxes that the destroy the air we breathe. In this time when pigs become lumps of sorrow soaked in preservatives and people register their personal decay in solitary massacres ... yes I will break the pattern of your summoning. I will sow the seeds of chaos and disorder about your shoes, both left and right. I have a cake baking in the oven, can you smell the vanilla?"
Definitely worth reading for the early glimpses of the accomplished writer Levy would become, although ultimately I'm glad she evolved to that one, rather than remained in this raw state.
September 14, 2016
My brain has absolutely no idea what just happened to it! This is the weirdest book I have read for a long time, but I really enjoyed the experience of reading it. It's very short, so I just sat here and read the whole thing in one go. At the end of it, my brain felt completely scrambled and I'm not really sure about everything that happened, even in such a short novel (novella?), but it's all good. There are several laugh-out-loud moments, several "What?!" moments and a few sad moments. I think the best plan is just to go with the whole surreal experience - strap yourself in and enjoy the ride: it's bizarre, but it's great fun. No attempt here to give a book description - you'll have to read it for yourself. 4.5 stars - almost a 5-star book. But not for everyone - for example, I feel pretty confident my wife, who reads a LOT of books, would put it down after about 3 pages.
September 18, 2016
More like a 4.5, but Levy's first novel (novella, really) is so strange and different it gets the bump up for its sheer audacity and exuberance. Usually, I read primarily for plot and character, with language a somewhat distant second. Here, however, I am not sure exactly WHAT happens, but it is so oddly compelling, and the language so exquisite, I was enchanted. Having come to this after reading Levy's two most recent, Booker-nominated books ('Hot Milk' and 'Swimming Home'), I can admire how her work has progressed and grown in maturity, but this is astonishing for a first novel.
July 2, 2014
Surreal and dark and manic and meandering and mediocre.
December 11, 2022
Dieser Roman sei sozialkritischer Surrealismus, sagt Levy über ihr erstes Buch, das ungestüm ist! Ein echtes Sturm-und-Drang-Debüt über den neoliberalen Raubtierkapitalismus der englischen 80er. Das Thema ist gleichzeitig vorder- und hintergründig, was ich meisterhaft komponiert finde. Dieser Trick funktioniert vor allem wegen der Figuren, die wie Commedia Dell Arte Zannis durch das Geschehen taumeln - immer bereit für lustvolle Purzelbäume, erotischen Schabernack oder destruktive Machtspiele. Sie verwandeln sich in Lachse, sprechen mit Lamas, erzählen von ihren Lieben und Freundschaften.
Ein herrlich sprachgewandter Roman, indem nichts und alles einen Sinn ergibt.
„Die Dichterin weigerte sich, zerstört zu werden.
Sie wartete, bis sich der Sturm in ihrem Inneren legte. Als es so weit war, pflanzte sie an die verwundeten Stellen Sonnenblumen.“
Ein herrlich sprachgewandter Roman, indem nichts und alles einen Sinn ergibt.
„Die Dichterin weigerte sich, zerstört zu werden.
Sie wartete, bis sich der Sturm in ihrem Inneren legte. Als es so weit war, pflanzte sie an die verwundeten Stellen Sonnenblumen.“
December 2, 2022
Schöne Mutanten ist wie eine Erasmus-Affäre mit dem mysteriösen, lockigen Spanier, der immer Ringe trägt: düster, feministisch, cool, lustig, geschwängert mit Kapitalismuskritik, aber in erster Linie ein wilder Ritt.
Alles endet in einem Desaster und war rückblickend schon etwas kitschig.
Es hat mir gut gefallen, auch wenn die Metaphern nicht immer ins Schwarze treffen. Wem die ersten Seiten missfallen, sollte sich besser nicht an so literarisch gott- und heimatlose Orte wagen.
Alles endet in einem Desaster und war rückblickend schon etwas kitschig.
Es hat mir gut gefallen, auch wenn die Metaphern nicht immer ins Schwarze treffen. Wem die ersten Seiten missfallen, sollte sich besser nicht an so literarisch gott- und heimatlose Orte wagen.
January 4, 2018
"...i am raping you with the archetypes you created..."
seriously?!?!? holycowamazing... i wallowed in the language of this mirage of a story... Levy spews beauty and pain and dirt and sex and gamma rays of terribleness and awe... this book is why i read books, for language that transports and transposes and transubstantiates... OK, i hate it when i try to be some sort of review badass... just read this.
seriously?!?!? holycowamazing... i wallowed in the language of this mirage of a story... Levy spews beauty and pain and dirt and sex and gamma rays of terribleness and awe... this book is why i read books, for language that transports and transposes and transubstantiates... OK, i hate it when i try to be some sort of review badass... just read this.
January 7, 2013
What a dark, disturbing, awesome, sexy book. After enjoying Swimming Home so much, I decided to delve a bit into Levy's oeuvre, and I like what I've found already.
October 13, 2018
I have no clue what I just finished listening to but it was mind-blowing. Totally weird but brilliant. Wow!
January 6, 2020
Four and a half stars.
As always with Levy - impeccably written. Only... WTF just happened?!?!
As always with Levy - impeccably written. Only... WTF just happened?!?!
September 7, 2024
The language is beautiful, some passages are really good and atmospheric but all in all the story or the different storylines were too abstract and didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
March 4, 2020
Erm, I’m not sure what to say about this book. I’m not quite sure what I think of it!! Short and bizarre to say the least!!
January 29, 2018
An allegorical post-modern mesh of poetic character rambling. The prose is hypnotic in parts, jarring in others though in all places it breathed with life and originality.
September 21, 2023
dnf @ 65%
I really really tried to understand what was happening but nothing made sense in this book
I really really tried to understand what was happening but nothing made sense in this book
August 12, 2024
This is weird but fascinating! It's almost little interconnected pieces of prose poetry or short stories, making up this novella of alienation and archetype that ends in a horrible zoo conflagration. Small character sketches of disconnected people, of migrants and workers and - honestly - people who have lost the plot or fallen away from society in one way or another. I was all for giving it five stars for most of the book, but I do think that the storyline of the Banker (awful woman) fell over itself at the end. It became a bit too obvious, as if this was the place where the author decided to hammer the theme into readers' heads. Overdone, I think, is the right word for it.
But still, fascinating. Back to the library this goes, and it goes as well on my list of books to get my own copy of.
But still, fascinating. Back to the library this goes, and it goes as well on my list of books to get my own copy of.
January 25, 2025
“I have summoned my first love demon and he has answered my call.” “When I visit my home town it’s like going back to the scene of some silent, unrecorded massacre.” Beautiful Mutants, Deborah Levy’s first ever novel (republished as the first half of Early Levy), is a scathing, bitingly satirical critique of late-Thatcher Britain, following an exile and a litany of symbolic characters through capitalist London, its vacuity and exhausting demands, as pertinent in 1989 as it is now. Funny, jarring, surreal and unreal, somehow sick with excess and writhing in deprivation all at once, Levy’s prose is an exercise in alienation, in doing to language (and in turn to nation) what language and nation do to the exile, the migrant, the outcast.
December 2, 2022
En fin surrealistisk kortroman, som fick mig att tänka på både Anaïs Nins prosa, Leonora Carrington och faktiskt Kathy Acker, men inte riktigt tog mig in i fullt ut, den höll mig på armlängds avstånd så att jag inte riktigt kände att jag hade tillräckligt med förståelse att hålla i genom läsningen. Den glider mellan ett gäng olika perspektiv länkade till varandra och gestaltande olika ganska trasiga mänskoliv med spretiga identiteter, med Lupinski som gemensam nämnare. Med några fler nycklar till förståelse skulle jag nog tycka om den mer. Men en liten upplevelse i sig själv är den trots det.
December 8, 2021
A Russian exile ends up in England where she is surrounded by a ghastly cast of characters. This book in almost every way defies description. There is no coherent storyline, no arc; the narration is filled with surreal dark imagery. This is Don DeLillo on acid, or if Salvador Dali's false persona was made flesh. Depraved and poetic, it does offer hints of the author's future brilliance, but unless you are already familiar with her work, you would likely not be interested in this debut.
February 11, 2025
read this because i was totally enamored with billy and girl (which i gave five stars) and wanted to explore more deborah levy. this one was a bit more languid, more like a picaresque poem than a novel. felt like the reading equivalent of a twisted peter greenaway movie or even a music video.
gorgeous language, clearly levy having fun with a scope and perspective that can't be achieved on stage. not my favorite though as i found it a bit too meandering and impenetrable.
gorgeous language, clearly levy having fun with a scope and perspective that can't be achieved on stage. not my favorite though as i found it a bit too meandering and impenetrable.
June 30, 2017
Honestly, no idea. I mean, spoiler alert, there's a talking llama. Barely a hint here of the novelist who would later write the terrific Hot Milk. This one just feels like it's trying too hard to be strange. The strangeness of Hot Milk is entirely more nonchalant. It's a good thing this was only 96 pages. I couldn't have taken much more.
November 6, 2023
This is an eerie and poetic tale of migration and displacement. It illustrates Deborah Levy's preoccupation with borders – who isn't, after all? Borders and distances turn people into strangers, even to themselves. This gives rise to the most peculiar mental journey that Levy explores in her narrative of 'mutants'.
March 27, 2024
this book is like a cross between william burroughs and olga tokarczuk and therefore i couldn’t stop reading it. i love deborah levy and this is completely insane and amazing. this is the age of the migrant and the missile. animals in a zoo burned with petrol and women losing their hands working on a meat belt. gross, but like…beautiful?
November 24, 2024
A philosophical lyrical tale. Lapinski a Russian exile is the central character. Each chapter is told in different characters voice and perspective. The last part is a descriptive horror of senseless cruelty. . I suppose if I were in a more intellectual mood I might have enjoyed it more but for now it was a jumble of condescending narratives.
February 4, 2024
Very interesting, descriptive and visual writing I just found it difficult to follow an overarching thread or take away between characters and stories to draw everything together. Does entice to read more Levy though it's so unique.
Read
July 16, 2024kwam deze opeens tegen in mn ibooks, en was m compleet vergeten, maar het is prachtig geschreven.
(moet je boeken voor altijd kunnen onthouden om ze goed te vinden? of neem ik te veel informatie op in mijn leven om niet alles en iedereen te kunnen onthouden?)
(moet je boeken voor altijd kunnen onthouden om ze goed te vinden? of neem ik te veel informatie op in mijn leven om niet alles en iedereen te kunnen onthouden?)
June 28, 2025
Not for me. First Levy book I’ve read and not sure I’ll bother with another. She’s probably saying something important and I’m too stupid to appreciate but I just found it too surreal and bizarre which is a shame as I think there’s potentially some very interesting characters.
May 30, 2017
I didn't understand the plot or anything actually but the writing was 10/10
Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews