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Une année à Paris, avec Gertrude Stein
Ni tout à fait un essai, ni tout à fait un roman, Une année à Paris nous conduit sur les traces de Gertrude Stein dans le Paris effervescent du début du XXe siècle. C'est une narratrice qui ressemble à bien des égards à celle du Coût de la vie qui enquête dans la ville lumière, de nos jours, au lendemain des élections américaines. Le cubisme, la politique et la guerre, sont au cœur de cette recherche intime et intellectuelle, où l'histoire entre Gertrude et Alice B. Toklas joue aussi un rôle majeur. Au fil de l'enquête, il est aussi question des flâneries de la narratrice, de ses rendez-vous amicaux avec Eva et Fanny, de cuisine bien sûr, et d'un chat disparu.
224 pages, Paperback
First published April 16, 2026
About the author
Deborah Levy
62 books3,978 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 136 reviews
April 17, 2026
Deborah Levy moved to Paris to produce a biography of Gertrude Stein, its working title Mama of Dada. But instead, she developed this fluid, compelling novel about trying and failing to finish it. Although queer author, art collector and thinker Stein’s experiences dominate the narrative, it also becomes an entry point into a broader meditation on women writers and creators, about identity, about modernity, about war and loss. It’s steeped in French culture from the very start, even the opening centred on the search for a lost cat eccentrically named ‘it’ echoes Cédric Klapisch’s classic movie Chacun cherche son chat. It’s Paris, November 2024, the novel’s narrator’s caught up with friend Eva’s desperate quest to find her beloved cat. It’s a welcome distraction from the narrator’s stalled essay about Gertrude Stein. So far all she has is a series of images and associations running through her mind : the wars happening now versus the wars Stein lived through; Paris scenes including the iconic Père Lachaise Cemetery Stein’s final resting place; the artists also buried there whose existence was irrevocably marked by war from Chaim Soutine to Georges Braque.
The quest for ‘it’ the cat becomes enmeshed with the narrator’s semi-philosophical quest for other lost ‘its’, symbol of the narrator’s uncertainties, her desire to make sense of her rapidly-changing world. A world the narrator thinks of in stark terms, “Gertrude Stein wanted to kill the nineteenth century. The twenty-first century seems to be killing itself.” Stein represents many things but among them is the shift from the Victorian to the modern. Was it a moment of gradual change or a moment of rupture? Stein was known too for taking realism to task, dismantling it bit by bit, a true iconoclast who devoted herself to producing work that defied ease of interpretation. In this, another of her self-proclaimed novels of ideas, Levy too is playing with realities. Her novel presents arguments, deals with artifice, with stand-ins, avatars, perhaps doppelgangers. The narrator is clearly another of Levy’s versions of herself, her Paris bolthole with its Kelim rugs and low beams explicitly replicates the place Levy inhabited in real life.
The narrator’s formed a trio with Eva and Fanny. Eva is another drawn to France, Fanny has always lived there. Three seems to hold special significance for Levy. Here the friends bring to mind Stein’s famous Three Lives but equally Levy’s assertion that she often reflects on, at least, three contradictory ways of thinking, embracing enigmas and ambiguities in her fiction. Not unlike Stein. The friends overlap yet remain distinct, Fanny’s polyamorous, juggling a number of women at any one time, some more important to her than others. She works in a resolutely capitalist industry but her personal life borders on old-school bohemian. Eva’s working on a graphic novel, her affections, her security gained from her bond with ‘it’ whose disappearance prompts a myriad of anxieties. Stein’s thoughts intermingle with the narrator's, particularly certain aphoristic statements. One seems particularly important, “Others are secret because they are other.” A saying that applies not only to the narrator’s writing block but to the very concept of biography, its fundamental impossibility, its mutability. Equally it comments on the narrator’s personal relationships especially with Eva whose subsequent choices reveal her to be quite different from the individual the narrator believed she knew.
Meanwhile the hunt for the elusive ‘it’ – the many elusive ‘its’ – continues. Cats have always been special to Levy. But this phantom cat is the catalyst for unexpected encounters. An older man on a park bench somehow becomes part of the trio’s everyday. His strange interest in the narrator’s knees, his shock of white hair, his cane, his name Jean-Luc, suggest a composite of Rohmer, Derrida, and Godard – one of Levy’s favourite directors who famously stated, “All you need for a movie is a gun and a cat.” Levy’s narrative is haunted by the guns firing in Ukraine, distant Gaza and her cat is curiously absent both there and not there. Just as the narrator’s attempts to accurately represent Stein are both progressing and frustratingly blocked. But Jean-Luc, who may or may not have been robbed of a similar cat, also seems to represent a culture of ideas and creativity dominated by masculine energies and perspectives. One that’s been very much visible throughout recent French history from philosophy to New Wave cinema and beyond. Levy’s narrator and Fanny suggest a turning away from this heritage, acknowledging its strengths but – again like Stein - refusing to follow in its footsteps. Fanny, in a sense, through her profession negotiates her role within male-dominated spheres. However, Eva, it seems, ultimately capitulates. I didn’t learn much about Stein I didn’t already know but I relished the ways in which the narrator’s notions about Stein opened up a dialogue about gender, about freedom and responsibility, about being in a current moment in an increasingly unpredictable, ravaged world. It’s a markedly feminist piece, albeit a rather rarefied bourgeois feminism, thoughtful, insightful and incredibly engaging. I’m not a huge fan of Levy’s novels but loved her memoirs and this offers similar pleasures.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Hamish Hamilton for an ARC
The quest for ‘it’ the cat becomes enmeshed with the narrator’s semi-philosophical quest for other lost ‘its’, symbol of the narrator’s uncertainties, her desire to make sense of her rapidly-changing world. A world the narrator thinks of in stark terms, “Gertrude Stein wanted to kill the nineteenth century. The twenty-first century seems to be killing itself.” Stein represents many things but among them is the shift from the Victorian to the modern. Was it a moment of gradual change or a moment of rupture? Stein was known too for taking realism to task, dismantling it bit by bit, a true iconoclast who devoted herself to producing work that defied ease of interpretation. In this, another of her self-proclaimed novels of ideas, Levy too is playing with realities. Her novel presents arguments, deals with artifice, with stand-ins, avatars, perhaps doppelgangers. The narrator is clearly another of Levy’s versions of herself, her Paris bolthole with its Kelim rugs and low beams explicitly replicates the place Levy inhabited in real life.
The narrator’s formed a trio with Eva and Fanny. Eva is another drawn to France, Fanny has always lived there. Three seems to hold special significance for Levy. Here the friends bring to mind Stein’s famous Three Lives but equally Levy’s assertion that she often reflects on, at least, three contradictory ways of thinking, embracing enigmas and ambiguities in her fiction. Not unlike Stein. The friends overlap yet remain distinct, Fanny’s polyamorous, juggling a number of women at any one time, some more important to her than others. She works in a resolutely capitalist industry but her personal life borders on old-school bohemian. Eva’s working on a graphic novel, her affections, her security gained from her bond with ‘it’ whose disappearance prompts a myriad of anxieties. Stein’s thoughts intermingle with the narrator's, particularly certain aphoristic statements. One seems particularly important, “Others are secret because they are other.” A saying that applies not only to the narrator’s writing block but to the very concept of biography, its fundamental impossibility, its mutability. Equally it comments on the narrator’s personal relationships especially with Eva whose subsequent choices reveal her to be quite different from the individual the narrator believed she knew.
Meanwhile the hunt for the elusive ‘it’ – the many elusive ‘its’ – continues. Cats have always been special to Levy. But this phantom cat is the catalyst for unexpected encounters. An older man on a park bench somehow becomes part of the trio’s everyday. His strange interest in the narrator’s knees, his shock of white hair, his cane, his name Jean-Luc, suggest a composite of Rohmer, Derrida, and Godard – one of Levy’s favourite directors who famously stated, “All you need for a movie is a gun and a cat.” Levy’s narrative is haunted by the guns firing in Ukraine, distant Gaza and her cat is curiously absent both there and not there. Just as the narrator’s attempts to accurately represent Stein are both progressing and frustratingly blocked. But Jean-Luc, who may or may not have been robbed of a similar cat, also seems to represent a culture of ideas and creativity dominated by masculine energies and perspectives. One that’s been very much visible throughout recent French history from philosophy to New Wave cinema and beyond. Levy’s narrator and Fanny suggest a turning away from this heritage, acknowledging its strengths but – again like Stein - refusing to follow in its footsteps. Fanny, in a sense, through her profession negotiates her role within male-dominated spheres. However, Eva, it seems, ultimately capitulates. I didn’t learn much about Stein I didn’t already know but I relished the ways in which the narrator’s notions about Stein opened up a dialogue about gender, about freedom and responsibility, about being in a current moment in an increasingly unpredictable, ravaged world. It’s a markedly feminist piece, albeit a rather rarefied bourgeois feminism, thoughtful, insightful and incredibly engaging. I’m not a huge fan of Levy’s novels but loved her memoirs and this offers similar pleasures.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Hamish Hamilton for an ARC
June 8, 2026
The title plainly tells almost all. Set in 2024, Deborah Levy’s My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein (2026) follows a writer temporarily staying in Paris, working on an essay about Gertrude Stein. It's definitely not a year of rest and relaxation, as she is struggling with writer's block. The narrative moves back and forth between present-day anxieties and the world of 1920s Paris, unfolding in a stream-of-consciousness form.
Alongside the unnamed narrator, we get acquainted with two of her friends: Eva, a graphic novelist obsessed with finding her missing cat, and Fanny, a financier who strongly dislikes Stein's writing style (those repetitions!) and leads an active love life. Unfortunately, neither of these characters resonated with me.
To be brutally honest, I found myself far more invested in the fate of "It" (the cat’s wonderfully peculiar name) than in Fanny’s sexual appetites or the narrator's creative throes. The contemporary characters felt oddly flat, almost as though they had been forced into the narrative to make the book more appealing. In my case, that strategy did not work. A tempting idea was to sieve out the modern-day elements, but it wasn't feasible, as the plots were entwined like roots of trees growing close to each other.
Gertrude Stein was such a remarkable and talented figure, with a brilliant mind and eccentric personality, that she hardly needed this kind of embellishment. I found myself wishing Levy had focused exclusively on her, although I realize that novels tend to attract a wider readership than biographies or essays. Everything connected to Gertrude Stein in Deborah Levy's book was utterly fascinating! I loved the anecdotes, the quotations, and the biographical details scattered throughout the text. Before reading this novel, my knowledge of Stein was rather limited, and I got to know her better with delight.
A few quotes to give you a glimpse:
She [Gertrude] longed for readers to find her, yet there was a part of her that could not bear to be found. She was even ashamed of her bestselling autobiography because it was so easy to understand.
Stein herself on being a genius in Everybody’s Autobiography:
It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.
And Levy on Alice B. Toklas—Gertrude Stein’s devoted partner, who described their erotic life as “gathering wild violets”:
Originally from San Francisco, a chain-smoker with a taste for expensive gloves, she would stuff lettuce leaves with sweetbreads and truffles cooked in sherry for her beloved, edit her work, help Gertrude self-publish, and still find time to sauté one hundred frog legs in butter and cream.
Finally, Levy on poodles, sentences and paragraphs:
Gertrude and Alice loved their two giant white poodles, Basket I and his successor, Basket II, as well as their little dog, Pepe. Gertrude would listen to the rhythm of Basket’s tongue lapping water from a bowl and claim it helped her understand the difference between writing sentences and writing paragraphs. She considered paragraphs to be much more emotional than sentences.
Let's face it, the narrator, Fanny and Eva didn't stand a chance against the amazing Gertrude, who completely stole the spotlight. It was a contest they were destined to lose from the very beginning. No wonder I finished the book far less interested in the fictional characters, who evaporated from my mind the moment I closed the book, than in the extraordinary woman at its centre. Her memory (the poodles included!) will be keeping me company for a long time to come.
Gertrude Stein and Basket.
Alongside the unnamed narrator, we get acquainted with two of her friends: Eva, a graphic novelist obsessed with finding her missing cat, and Fanny, a financier who strongly dislikes Stein's writing style (those repetitions!) and leads an active love life. Unfortunately, neither of these characters resonated with me.
To be brutally honest, I found myself far more invested in the fate of "It" (the cat’s wonderfully peculiar name) than in Fanny’s sexual appetites or the narrator's creative throes. The contemporary characters felt oddly flat, almost as though they had been forced into the narrative to make the book more appealing. In my case, that strategy did not work. A tempting idea was to sieve out the modern-day elements, but it wasn't feasible, as the plots were entwined like roots of trees growing close to each other.
Gertrude Stein was such a remarkable and talented figure, with a brilliant mind and eccentric personality, that she hardly needed this kind of embellishment. I found myself wishing Levy had focused exclusively on her, although I realize that novels tend to attract a wider readership than biographies or essays. Everything connected to Gertrude Stein in Deborah Levy's book was utterly fascinating! I loved the anecdotes, the quotations, and the biographical details scattered throughout the text. Before reading this novel, my knowledge of Stein was rather limited, and I got to know her better with delight.
A few quotes to give you a glimpse:
She [Gertrude] longed for readers to find her, yet there was a part of her that could not bear to be found. She was even ashamed of her bestselling autobiography because it was so easy to understand.
Stein herself on being a genius in Everybody’s Autobiography:
It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.
And Levy on Alice B. Toklas—Gertrude Stein’s devoted partner, who described their erotic life as “gathering wild violets”:
Originally from San Francisco, a chain-smoker with a taste for expensive gloves, she would stuff lettuce leaves with sweetbreads and truffles cooked in sherry for her beloved, edit her work, help Gertrude self-publish, and still find time to sauté one hundred frog legs in butter and cream.
Finally, Levy on poodles, sentences and paragraphs:
Gertrude and Alice loved their two giant white poodles, Basket I and his successor, Basket II, as well as their little dog, Pepe. Gertrude would listen to the rhythm of Basket’s tongue lapping water from a bowl and claim it helped her understand the difference between writing sentences and writing paragraphs. She considered paragraphs to be much more emotional than sentences.
Let's face it, the narrator, Fanny and Eva didn't stand a chance against the amazing Gertrude, who completely stole the spotlight. It was a contest they were destined to lose from the very beginning. No wonder I finished the book far less interested in the fictional characters, who evaporated from my mind the moment I closed the book, than in the extraordinary woman at its centre. Her memory (the poodles included!) will be keeping me company for a long time to come.
Gertrude Stein and Basket.
April 21, 2026
this book just went triple platinum in my mind
January 28, 2026
“Meanwhile, bombs are falling through the twenty-first century upon the living and the soon-to-be dead.”
Deborah Levy seems to be the only intellectual cosmically qualified for the job of interrogating the life of Gertrude Stein from her current place in history decades upstream. As with all of her books, in My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein, Deborah Levy creates a separate realm that exists in both body and mind, the real and the surreal. She drags her hand (and pen) across the border where realism ends, where otherworldly wisdom is waiting to break through and to be channeled by the right writer. Along with Deborah Levy's unique writing and sharp perception, she delivers a thorough biography of Gertrude Stein despite her opaqueness. Only Deborah Levy could do it.
Deborah Levy seems to be the only intellectual cosmically qualified for the job of interrogating the life of Gertrude Stein from her current place in history decades upstream. As with all of her books, in My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein, Deborah Levy creates a separate realm that exists in both body and mind, the real and the surreal. She drags her hand (and pen) across the border where realism ends, where otherworldly wisdom is waiting to break through and to be channeled by the right writer. Along with Deborah Levy's unique writing and sharp perception, she delivers a thorough biography of Gertrude Stein despite her opaqueness. Only Deborah Levy could do it.
February 26, 2026
love my girl deb lev
May 10, 2026
I’m levinating
March 12, 2026
she’s so bloody good
May 27, 2026
Deborah Levy is exceptional!
read this one because of Paris and Gertrude Stein but also to enjoy Levy's playful experiments with her thinking and writing.
somehow, there's joy in Levy's writing even when she touches on some very hard topics. that's a talent in itself.
read this one because of Paris and Gertrude Stein but also to enjoy Levy's playful experiments with her thinking and writing.
somehow, there's joy in Levy's writing even when she touches on some very hard topics. that's a talent in itself.
June 8, 2026
i know nothing about gertrude stein but i was still engrossed in this book enough to finish it in one day! deborah levy is one of my most read authors (only after annie ernaux and rachel cusk) but her last 2 releases weren’t my favorite, so i’m glad to have enjoyed this one a bit more. there isn’t much in the way of plot, which follows our narrator and 2 of her friends in paris, but learning about gertrude stein’s life gave this enough substance to be compelling. stopped a few times to look things up that i was curious about but levy provides sufficient context. i liked how the question of how we put ourselves together kept overlapping between the narrator’s life and stein’s life. levy employs her sparse prose that i always love, and this was a quick read!
thank you to fsg and netgalley for the advanced copy!
thank you to fsg and netgalley for the advanced copy!
May 16, 2026
Reading about art, artists and writers isn’t my favourite thing to do, and so a lot of this went over my head - i prefer to read/ digest and appreciate artwork firsthand.
But there were moments that struck me in this book, and I always like how Levy’s writing can swing so quickly between being deeply profound (intentionally or unintentionally) and being wry and to the point.
I’m probably not the target audience of this book but I appreciated little moments in it nonetheless. Also learnt a lot about Stein and her philosophies which I found interesting, though I think I’d struggle with her actual work.
‘I unwrapped the oozing baguette and devoured it there and then amongst the dead. The living have appetites. Desires. To drive us mad. To make us joyful. To make us cry. To lead us up the wrong path and down the right path. The dead have done all that. The dead who can no longer feel the rain had spent a lifetime creating themselves.’
‘When I told Fanny I like reading books I don't understand, she said, 'Why not have some sex you don't understand?’’
‘Meanwhile, rain was falling gently on Paris, including on all its trees and statues and on every caress at a bus stop and on every kiss by a fountain.’
But there were moments that struck me in this book, and I always like how Levy’s writing can swing so quickly between being deeply profound (intentionally or unintentionally) and being wry and to the point.
I’m probably not the target audience of this book but I appreciated little moments in it nonetheless. Also learnt a lot about Stein and her philosophies which I found interesting, though I think I’d struggle with her actual work.
‘I unwrapped the oozing baguette and devoured it there and then amongst the dead. The living have appetites. Desires. To drive us mad. To make us joyful. To make us cry. To lead us up the wrong path and down the right path. The dead have done all that. The dead who can no longer feel the rain had spent a lifetime creating themselves.’
‘When I told Fanny I like reading books I don't understand, she said, 'Why not have some sex you don't understand?’’
‘Meanwhile, rain was falling gently on Paris, including on all its trees and statues and on every caress at a bus stop and on every kiss by a fountain.’
April 18, 2026
This was my first Levy and definitely not my last. This was absolutely everything I could possibly want in a novel. I’m just upset it took me so long to read any of her work.
May 25, 2026
"Gertrude Stein wanted to kill the nineteenth century. The twenty first century seems to be killing itself."
..& how perfectly the unnamed narrator of this Genre Defying, witty novel imbibes her inspiration "Gertrude Stein" when she kills the expectations of her past to live in the shadow of a literary giant like Stein but then also finds that the very idea of a future seems to be killing itself in the messy reality of her 21st century friendships & relationships
She has moved to Paris & is spending time with her 2 friends Eva (a Danish artist in a long distance marriage) & Fanny ( an adventurous French financier who believes in polyamory). Here she is trying to write an essay on Stein. While it has been constantly reiterated throughout the book that Stein (a formidable American writer & art collector) doesn't like to be understood, the irony of the concept lies right here coz the protagonist absolutely reveres Stein & is also trying to understand her so as to write this essay about her
But she also finds the task nearly impossible, feeling both captivated and frustrated by Stein’s baffling prose
"(Gertrude Stein) removed all question marks from her work because she said it was obvious when something is a question. She found them revolting. And she thought commas were servile. Readers should be free to take a breath whenever they feel like it. Her main aim was for a sentence to push onwards"
The narrative starts with the sentence
"Eva called to say she had lost it"
It's only when you read the next sentence that you come to know that the 'it' in the sentence is a Cat. But then I guess that's the mastery of Levy's work, even if for a second she lets your mind travel a whole lot of dimensions trying to figure out what that 'it' can be - is 'it' mind, is 'it' identity, is 'it' goals
"While Picasso was painting her portrait, he couldn't paint her head. Perhaps he was transmitting Stein shaped sentences to his paint brush. A Stein shaped sentence is a very bespoke thing."
Levy isn't shy of name dropping, finding connections or even creating them
"I am walking through the hundred and ten acres of Père Lachaise Cemetery in the 20th arrondissement to find the grave of Gertrude Stein. Here in the wind and rain I see the dead buried in my mind, lit up, lit up with life, vanity, suffering and fame. I know what a few of them looked like from photographs and paintings, the various attitudes in their eyes and their various talents. Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Chopin, Proust, Apollinaire, Georges Perec, Colette, Modigliani, are all buried here"
This only further amplifies narrator's chaotic mind which finds more clarity in the cemetery than she does in the chaotic lives of her friends, Fanny and Eva
This book is something special. I don't even know how to pitch it to you. I can gauge that my review is chaotic, much like my mind after reading this book which is chaotic riot but yet so good, so cerebral, so funny and so engaging. I have highlighted every next paragraph. There are many quotes but then there are many sentences which don't have the traits of a quote yet I want to read them again & again
This one became all the more special to me with its mention of elite dancers like Merce Cunningham & Isadora Duncan in it, who have had a great impact on my career as a dancer -choreographer
This is my 1st book by Levy. While people may say it's not the best place to start the Levy journey but I had super fun with it & won't have it any other way. I have so much to say but for now will rest my case with these brilliant words of Levy
"What else are wars for except wounding? What else are words for except to press on a wound?"
Let Levy's words press on yours
Read it & still have the best fun with the most special writing
Thank you Netgalley and Hamish Hamilton for advance review arc
..& how perfectly the unnamed narrator of this Genre Defying, witty novel imbibes her inspiration "Gertrude Stein" when she kills the expectations of her past to live in the shadow of a literary giant like Stein but then also finds that the very idea of a future seems to be killing itself in the messy reality of her 21st century friendships & relationships
She has moved to Paris & is spending time with her 2 friends Eva (a Danish artist in a long distance marriage) & Fanny ( an adventurous French financier who believes in polyamory). Here she is trying to write an essay on Stein. While it has been constantly reiterated throughout the book that Stein (a formidable American writer & art collector) doesn't like to be understood, the irony of the concept lies right here coz the protagonist absolutely reveres Stein & is also trying to understand her so as to write this essay about her
But she also finds the task nearly impossible, feeling both captivated and frustrated by Stein’s baffling prose
"(Gertrude Stein) removed all question marks from her work because she said it was obvious when something is a question. She found them revolting. And she thought commas were servile. Readers should be free to take a breath whenever they feel like it. Her main aim was for a sentence to push onwards"
The narrative starts with the sentence
"Eva called to say she had lost it"
It's only when you read the next sentence that you come to know that the 'it' in the sentence is a Cat. But then I guess that's the mastery of Levy's work, even if for a second she lets your mind travel a whole lot of dimensions trying to figure out what that 'it' can be - is 'it' mind, is 'it' identity, is 'it' goals
"While Picasso was painting her portrait, he couldn't paint her head. Perhaps he was transmitting Stein shaped sentences to his paint brush. A Stein shaped sentence is a very bespoke thing."
Levy isn't shy of name dropping, finding connections or even creating them
"I am walking through the hundred and ten acres of Père Lachaise Cemetery in the 20th arrondissement to find the grave of Gertrude Stein. Here in the wind and rain I see the dead buried in my mind, lit up, lit up with life, vanity, suffering and fame. I know what a few of them looked like from photographs and paintings, the various attitudes in their eyes and their various talents. Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Chopin, Proust, Apollinaire, Georges Perec, Colette, Modigliani, are all buried here"
This only further amplifies narrator's chaotic mind which finds more clarity in the cemetery than she does in the chaotic lives of her friends, Fanny and Eva
This book is something special. I don't even know how to pitch it to you. I can gauge that my review is chaotic, much like my mind after reading this book which is chaotic riot but yet so good, so cerebral, so funny and so engaging. I have highlighted every next paragraph. There are many quotes but then there are many sentences which don't have the traits of a quote yet I want to read them again & again
This one became all the more special to me with its mention of elite dancers like Merce Cunningham & Isadora Duncan in it, who have had a great impact on my career as a dancer -choreographer
This is my 1st book by Levy. While people may say it's not the best place to start the Levy journey but I had super fun with it & won't have it any other way. I have so much to say but for now will rest my case with these brilliant words of Levy
"What else are wars for except wounding? What else are words for except to press on a wound?"
Let Levy's words press on yours
Read it & still have the best fun with the most special writing
Thank you Netgalley and Hamish Hamilton for advance review arc
June 2, 2026
“If we create ourselves with and through language, it seems to me that Gertrude Stein’s project was to dismantle herself and a whole century through language, to uncreate herself as she had been created by her father, by her sneering professor at John Hopkins, by her brother, to undo the manner of the nineteenth century. Get rid of commas. Get rid of question marks. She did not want to be told when to take a breath and when something was a question or who to love or how to dress. Get rid of clichés. Break through the conventions of genre. Stein was going to step out of the frame, away from the life of her mother and aunts, away from the uncomfortable femininities that had been societally constructed to keep her in her place.”
If there was ever a city in which to deconstruct your identity and step out of the frame of your own self-perception, it would be Paris.
Picasso, Hemingway, Chagall, Fitzgerald, Baldwin, Modigliani, Kundera, Wilde, Dali and Joyce. They all journeyed to the banks of the river Seine to shed a few skins and dip their feet into the streams of consciousness of past and future centuries. Unmoored and hungry for a revolution.
So did the enigma that is Gertrude Stein.
If there was ever a perfect writer to explore the nooks and crannies of modernism, it would be Deborah Levy. She came to Paris looking for Stein, armed with two soaked London raincoats, unmoored and hungry for a fight.
What she gives us is a novel/treatise/meditation that is as slippery, visually striking and intellectually delightful as a film by Jean-Luc Godard or Éric Rohmer, punctured by shards of texts, philosophical questions, the daily conversations between three women friends on the hunt for a lost cat named It.
By exploding the linearity of traditional literary criticism, Levy creates a living tableau that is anything but still, always in motion, always rearranging itself in space, in perpetual dialogue.
There is a painting of Levy by Paul-Hebert Percy in the National Portait Gallery in London that encapsulates her genius: her face, but split in three, kaleidoscopic, a third eye unmoored and hungry for expression.
Cherchez la femme.
If there was ever a city in which to deconstruct your identity and step out of the frame of your own self-perception, it would be Paris.
Picasso, Hemingway, Chagall, Fitzgerald, Baldwin, Modigliani, Kundera, Wilde, Dali and Joyce. They all journeyed to the banks of the river Seine to shed a few skins and dip their feet into the streams of consciousness of past and future centuries. Unmoored and hungry for a revolution.
So did the enigma that is Gertrude Stein.
If there was ever a perfect writer to explore the nooks and crannies of modernism, it would be Deborah Levy. She came to Paris looking for Stein, armed with two soaked London raincoats, unmoored and hungry for a fight.
What she gives us is a novel/treatise/meditation that is as slippery, visually striking and intellectually delightful as a film by Jean-Luc Godard or Éric Rohmer, punctured by shards of texts, philosophical questions, the daily conversations between three women friends on the hunt for a lost cat named It.
By exploding the linearity of traditional literary criticism, Levy creates a living tableau that is anything but still, always in motion, always rearranging itself in space, in perpetual dialogue.
There is a painting of Levy by Paul-Hebert Percy in the National Portait Gallery in London that encapsulates her genius: her face, but split in three, kaleidoscopic, a third eye unmoored and hungry for expression.
Cherchez la femme.
June 3, 2026
Shelving as another “weird, but I dug it” little novel.
May 8, 2026
4 ⭐️
I love it when my favourite author releases a new book!! But! even though I enjoyed this one, I've enjoyed many of her other works even more. Nevertheless, it was interesting to learn more about Gertrude Stein through this book, which contains some beautiful writing.
All to say: It has a cat, modernism, Paris and a queer icon to learn about, what more could you want?
•••
‘Meanwhile, rain was falling gently on Paris, including on all its trees and statues and on every caress at a bus stop and on every kiss by a fountain.’
‘I listened in.
No bells were ringing.
I could hear birds and the hum of traffic and rain falling on the trees and falling on the dead of Père Lachaise. The dead who can no longer feel the rain or suffer or search for love and fame or turn up drunk for dinner and be pushed down the stairs by their host.’
I love it when my favourite author releases a new book!! But! even though I enjoyed this one, I've enjoyed many of her other works even more. Nevertheless, it was interesting to learn more about Gertrude Stein through this book, which contains some beautiful writing.
All to say: It has a cat, modernism, Paris and a queer icon to learn about, what more could you want?
•••
‘Meanwhile, rain was falling gently on Paris, including on all its trees and statues and on every caress at a bus stop and on every kiss by a fountain.’
‘I listened in.
No bells were ringing.
I could hear birds and the hum of traffic and rain falling on the trees and falling on the dead of Père Lachaise. The dead who can no longer feel the rain or suffer or search for love and fame or turn up drunk for dinner and be pushed down the stairs by their host.’
Read
May 20, 2026Hmmm I’m torn because I so wanted to love this. And I did enjoy reading it! But I think after reading Francesca Wade’s miracle of a Stein biography, this fell a little flat in terms of the Stein analyses. Like it wasn’t really doing anything new for me or deepening or complicating my (non)understanding of Steins life and work. But of course this is not a biography, it’s a novel about trying to write about Gertrude Stein and failing, about the failures and fictions of biography. There’s a lot to admire here - I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to mix essay and fiction, how to do the genre of artist writing combined with self-writing that I love where the “self” is fictional and the “I” is unstable. This book provides one possible model for that kind of experimentation.
May 18, 2026
I keep coming back to Levy for the tedious yet minute fluency of her Hot Milk and The Man Who Saw Everything, but every recent book of hers has only seemed lazier and lazier. The only interesting bits of this fanfic-cum-novel were Stein's words, sprawled around the insipid prose that for some reason, unbeknowst to the gods of creative writing college classes, obsessed over drowning and running a cat over again and again every few pages. The narrator knew there would be no way to breach Stein's 'genius,' but this TikTokification of her life and ideas might be in poor taste even for the lesbian mistress-master of modernist satire herself.
May 14, 2026
This genre defying novel unfolds through two interwoven narrative structures that we move in and out of throughout the book: the author’s essay on Gertrude Stein and her experience writing that essay while spending a year in Paris alongside two friends, one looking for her missing cat and the other navigating the complexities of her polyamorous relationships.
Having known almost nothing about Gertrude Stein prior to reading this, I admittedly entered the novel far more interested in Levy’s quotidian life in Paris and the dynamics between her and her friends. But I unexpectedly found myself utterly enamored with Stein herself (her eccentricities, relationships, intellectual circles, and artistic ambitions). While I still struggle to fully comprehend some of her more radically avant garde works, particularly the poetry, I still remain fascinated by Levy’s attempt to understand them.
Levy writes early in the novel, “Muses are a projection, a delusion without needs or biography (what do we know about the families of female muses?).” The novel itself feels like an attempt to resist that very flattening. Levy traces not only Stein herself but also the lives, relationships, families, works, and artistic circles of those orbiting her, as well as those living parallel intellectual and artistic lives.
Through Stein, Levy strings together seminal artists, intellectuals, writers, and thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries in a manner reminiscent of Virginia Woolf or perhaps Stein herself: associative, fluid, perpetually digressive, moving almost like the Seine river. The prose is short, incisive, and deceptively effortless as it moves from cultural criticism to intimate biographical detail, from artistic movements to domestic minutiae.
Stream of consciousness writing is usually hit or miss for me, but here it feels perfectly suited to the kind of intellectual and emotional rabbit hole Levy invites the reader into. It becomes genuinely fascinating to see how the lives of artists and thinkers who shaped their respective fields intertwine once you begin looking into their friendships, romances, creative influences, and social circles.
What I found especially compelling is Levy’s ability to wander into seemingly irrelevant tangents only to reveal a couple of lines later that they were never irrelevant at all. Perhaps I found this so delightful because it mirrors the way my own neurodivergent mind functions. When an idea settles somewhere in my subconscious, I find myself continuously tracing new associations and connections to it throughout the day.
This novel exceeded my expectations. I derived immense pleasure from Levy’s rendering of quotidian life in Paris as a writer: the cafés she frequents, the food she purchases, the meals shared among friends, the quiet rhythms of an intellectual life unfolding alongside artistic inquiry. There is something so intimate and charming about the way she writes about inhabiting a city.
The book also feels like an ode to lovers of literature, art, and cultural history in many ways. I adored the dense network of references and connections between canonical writers, artists, philosophers, and thinkers. Reading it often felt less like following a conventional narrative and more like falling down an endless web of artistic and intellectual connections in the best way.
Levy’s writing is genuinely incredible. I found myself repeatedly wondering how she even arrives at writing in this manner, not merely prose wise but structurally as well.
I can’t entirely pinpoint why this charmed me as much as it did, but the cumulative effect of all these elements together worked so well for me that I have no choice but to give it five stars. You know a book has thoroughly consumed you when you keep interrupting your partner’s day to read passages aloud and every passage somehow spirals into a rabbit hole discussion afterward.
Oh, I also immediately went to the store and bought raclette after finishing this book.
💌 Thank you to the publisher for the copy! All opinions are my own as a stingy 5 start giver.
Having known almost nothing about Gertrude Stein prior to reading this, I admittedly entered the novel far more interested in Levy’s quotidian life in Paris and the dynamics between her and her friends. But I unexpectedly found myself utterly enamored with Stein herself (her eccentricities, relationships, intellectual circles, and artistic ambitions). While I still struggle to fully comprehend some of her more radically avant garde works, particularly the poetry, I still remain fascinated by Levy’s attempt to understand them.
Levy writes early in the novel, “Muses are a projection, a delusion without needs or biography (what do we know about the families of female muses?).” The novel itself feels like an attempt to resist that very flattening. Levy traces not only Stein herself but also the lives, relationships, families, works, and artistic circles of those orbiting her, as well as those living parallel intellectual and artistic lives.
Through Stein, Levy strings together seminal artists, intellectuals, writers, and thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries in a manner reminiscent of Virginia Woolf or perhaps Stein herself: associative, fluid, perpetually digressive, moving almost like the Seine river. The prose is short, incisive, and deceptively effortless as it moves from cultural criticism to intimate biographical detail, from artistic movements to domestic minutiae.
Stream of consciousness writing is usually hit or miss for me, but here it feels perfectly suited to the kind of intellectual and emotional rabbit hole Levy invites the reader into. It becomes genuinely fascinating to see how the lives of artists and thinkers who shaped their respective fields intertwine once you begin looking into their friendships, romances, creative influences, and social circles.
What I found especially compelling is Levy’s ability to wander into seemingly irrelevant tangents only to reveal a couple of lines later that they were never irrelevant at all. Perhaps I found this so delightful because it mirrors the way my own neurodivergent mind functions. When an idea settles somewhere in my subconscious, I find myself continuously tracing new associations and connections to it throughout the day.
This novel exceeded my expectations. I derived immense pleasure from Levy’s rendering of quotidian life in Paris as a writer: the cafés she frequents, the food she purchases, the meals shared among friends, the quiet rhythms of an intellectual life unfolding alongside artistic inquiry. There is something so intimate and charming about the way she writes about inhabiting a city.
The book also feels like an ode to lovers of literature, art, and cultural history in many ways. I adored the dense network of references and connections between canonical writers, artists, philosophers, and thinkers. Reading it often felt less like following a conventional narrative and more like falling down an endless web of artistic and intellectual connections in the best way.
Levy’s writing is genuinely incredible. I found myself repeatedly wondering how she even arrives at writing in this manner, not merely prose wise but structurally as well.
I can’t entirely pinpoint why this charmed me as much as it did, but the cumulative effect of all these elements together worked so well for me that I have no choice but to give it five stars. You know a book has thoroughly consumed you when you keep interrupting your partner’s day to read passages aloud and every passage somehow spirals into a rabbit hole discussion afterward.
Oh, I also immediately went to the store and bought raclette after finishing this book.
💌 Thank you to the publisher for the copy! All opinions are my own as a stingy 5 start giver.
April 17, 2026
“Gertrude Stein. Naming herself as a genius was a stroke of genius. Everyone would argue about it for ever.”
Deborah Levy writes about women in the most nuanced and poignant and refreshing way- this is no exception. A beautiful portrait of Gertrude Stein’s life and her breaking free from societal expectations, but also about contemporary life and current struggles with dating, politics, friendships, and feeling lost
I genuinely am so sad this is over I want to read it again
Deborah Levy writes about women in the most nuanced and poignant and refreshing way- this is no exception. A beautiful portrait of Gertrude Stein’s life and her breaking free from societal expectations, but also about contemporary life and current struggles with dating, politics, friendships, and feeling lost
I genuinely am so sad this is over I want to read it again
Read
May 6, 20263,5*
April 28, 2026
4,5
ik denk niet dat ik nu iets van Gertrude Stein zou willen lezen, maar jongens, wat een boek! Parijs, identiteit, modernisme, een kat, ik heb genoten.
ik denk niet dat ik nu iets van Gertrude Stein zou willen lezen, maar jongens, wat een boek! Parijs, identiteit, modernisme, een kat, ik heb genoten.
May 28, 2026
'Why are you wearing stiletto heels for this
walk, Fanny?'
'For my mental health.'
walk, Fanny?'
'For my mental health.'
May 23, 2026
Oh Deborah Levy, thanks for writing your wonderful books. Provided a lot of enjoyment, as per.
Finished this outside Pampushka in Budapest, devoured an aranygaluska doughnut alongside it and enjoyed the May sun.
Finished this outside Pampushka in Budapest, devoured an aranygaluska doughnut alongside it and enjoyed the May sun.
April 29, 2026
I loved the autobiography and not much else… until this one! Perfect
April 4, 2026
Superbement ficelé, cette aventure nous tient par la main douce et drôlement généreuse et maintenant je ne sais plus comment faire avec la ponctuation... Enjoy.
April 19, 2026
I absolutely love Deborah Levy and alls she writes. Here she tries to bring together her fiction (a story of three women, who became friends in Paris, one of them writing about Gertrude Stein) and her Living Autobiography writings together. The book compiles lovely quotes taken from Gertrude Stein‘s writing and others and meditations on her life.
I sometimes struggled to see both the fictional and con-fiction sections as equal and was not fully satisfied with either section.
That being said, I still enjoyed all of Deborah Levy‘s insights and wish I could have stayed a bit longer in either world.
Thank you NetGalley for the digital review copy
I sometimes struggled to see both the fictional and con-fiction sections as equal and was not fully satisfied with either section.
That being said, I still enjoyed all of Deborah Levy‘s insights and wish I could have stayed a bit longer in either world.
Thank you NetGalley for the digital review copy
June 5, 2026
Finally,
after several highly anticipated novels that left me disappointed, and concerned that I was losing my knack for reading, THIS!
Trust Deborah Levy to write a "fiction" about writing an essay, in which IT might be a cat, it might be love, it might be there, a walking stick might be a cat, and words can be whatever they want to be, and make it work!!
I thought I had forgotten what it feels like to be thrilled by a book.
after several highly anticipated novels that left me disappointed, and concerned that I was losing my knack for reading, THIS!
Trust Deborah Levy to write a "fiction" about writing an essay, in which IT might be a cat, it might be love, it might be there, a walking stick might be a cat, and words can be whatever they want to be, and make it work!!
I thought I had forgotten what it feels like to be thrilled by a book.
June 8, 2026
3 ⭐️ a new deborah levy! but maybe my least favourite so far. the writing was absolutely gorgeous, but there was just something missing for me. and usually i love reading about art and artists. i did love the parisian setting. maybe i expected something different.
June 5, 2026
My favourite DL book I’ve read, glad she got a mention of e-bikes in there.
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