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The Unloved
(Alternative cover for ISBN: 9780241146590 )
When a group of hedonistic West European tourists gathers to celebrate Christmas in a remote French chateau, an Englishwoman is murdered. The subsequent inquiry into the killing proves to be more an investigation into the nature of love, insatiable rage, and sadistic desire.
When a group of hedonistic West European tourists gathers to celebrate Christmas in a remote French chateau, an Englishwoman is murdered. The subsequent inquiry into the killing proves to be more an investigation into the nature of love, insatiable rage, and sadistic desire.
200 pages, Paperback
First published July 21, 1994
About the author
Deborah Levy
59 books4,031 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 92 reviews
February 25, 2017
An early Levy novel that offers a fascinating insight into the development that reached fruition with Swimming Home and Hot Milk.
Like Swimming Home much of this book takes place in a holiday house with a rather odd collection of guests - this time a chateau in Normandy. Each of the characters represents a nation, and Levy deliberately confuses things by switching between their names and nationalities. The middle part is set in Algeria in the late 50s.
The atmosphere is creepy and dreamlike, full of symbolism and striking imagery but at times difficult to follow. I won't pretend I didn't find this a little frustrating but it was definitely worth reading.
Like Swimming Home much of this book takes place in a holiday house with a rather odd collection of guests - this time a chateau in Normandy. Each of the characters represents a nation, and Levy deliberately confuses things by switching between their names and nationalities. The middle part is set in Algeria in the late 50s.
The atmosphere is creepy and dreamlike, full of symbolism and striking imagery but at times difficult to follow. I won't pretend I didn't find this a little frustrating but it was definitely worth reading.
January 28, 2021
OK, I'm clearly in the minority, as most people HATED this! But take equal parts Lawrence Durrell, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Agatha Christie - puree on high, and the resulting cocktail is 'The Unloved'... while at the same time remaining 100% Levy. It IS a difficult book to follow, but the key for me was keeping a character list I could refer back to and add on as the book progressed. It doesn't help that Levy almost arbitrarily and alternately refers to her characters by either their names or country of origin (hence, Nancy is sometimes called by name, sometimes is referred to as 'the American woman'), so that one has to keep both straight, which can be exhausting.
And it doesn't help that in the second part (a flashback to Tangiers in 1957) that one character (Yasmina) uses the pseudonym of another character (Jane), so that I was confused for many pages as to who the narrator actually was (N.B. - this MAY be intentional). Regardless, the point is NOT the solution of the murder, which turns out something of a red herring, and not a true murder after all. I would be hard pressed to explicate exactly WHAT the book was trying to say - but enjoyed every moment of the journey.
And it doesn't help that in the second part (a flashback to Tangiers in 1957) that one character (Yasmina) uses the pseudonym of another character (Jane), so that I was confused for many pages as to who the narrator actually was (N.B. - this MAY be intentional). Regardless, the point is NOT the solution of the murder, which turns out something of a red herring, and not a true murder after all. I would be hard pressed to explicate exactly WHAT the book was trying to say - but enjoyed every moment of the journey.
May 13, 2011
The two previous DL books I sampled were triumphs, most notably the dark comedy Billy & Girl. This one was closer to Ophelia & the Great Idea in style, but given scope to roam outside the short form, this style becomes an overblown flan of staggering pretention.
The book opens in a French chateau with a vague drawing-room murder setup. We’re then introduced to a range of characters worse than Big Brother contestants for sheer violent weirdo backward madness. These are the Unloved of the title: representatives from America and Europe brought together to pervert each other in this wherever-the-fuck location.
Woven through this non-story are long diaries of a violent marriage in Deep South USA and some sort of East European conflict narrative. The novel is pathologically hard to follow, so feels more like a series of dreamlike, violent set pieces. The characters speak in a form of poetic lit-speak, even those with heavily accented dialogue, making them little more than ideas strung together with arch, arrogant language.
Dark sexual abuse and graphic violence punctuates the narrative, which is uncompromising and incomprehensible.
The book opens in a French chateau with a vague drawing-room murder setup. We’re then introduced to a range of characters worse than Big Brother contestants for sheer violent weirdo backward madness. These are the Unloved of the title: representatives from America and Europe brought together to pervert each other in this wherever-the-fuck location.
Woven through this non-story are long diaries of a violent marriage in Deep South USA and some sort of East European conflict narrative. The novel is pathologically hard to follow, so feels more like a series of dreamlike, violent set pieces. The characters speak in a form of poetic lit-speak, even those with heavily accented dialogue, making them little more than ideas strung together with arch, arrogant language.
Dark sexual abuse and graphic violence punctuates the narrative, which is uncompromising and incomprehensible.
October 17, 2016
There are fictions, technologies, geographies, and there is poetry. There is coherence, incoherence and exhilaration. There is attraction and playing it cool and there is attraction and abandon. There is love and there is ambivalence, but there is mostly ambivalence. And there is freedom. What do you do with freedom?
There are certainly fictions, technologies, geographies and poetry in this amazing book. It can be difficult to keep track of the story and the characters. I made a list of the characters and the relationships between them and I think this is a good idea because all of them are sometimes called by their name and sometimes by their nationality (so, for example, Philippe is sometimes Philippe and sometimes "the Frenchman"). When there are quite a few characters with this dual identity, having a list to refer to really helps.
The story isn't straightforward, either, mainly because the middle (long) section skips back in time to tell the story of the parents of one of the people in the group we are introduced to in the early part of the book and return to in the final stages.
A lot of people have hated this book, but I loved it. For me, Levy is better the longer her books are. I've read some of her shorter works and they are beautiful and strange, but I think her longer works are more engrossing. I really enjoyed reading this, even if I am not 100% sure at the end that I know what was actually going on.
There are certainly fictions, technologies, geographies and poetry in this amazing book. It can be difficult to keep track of the story and the characters. I made a list of the characters and the relationships between them and I think this is a good idea because all of them are sometimes called by their name and sometimes by their nationality (so, for example, Philippe is sometimes Philippe and sometimes "the Frenchman"). When there are quite a few characters with this dual identity, having a list to refer to really helps.
The story isn't straightforward, either, mainly because the middle (long) section skips back in time to tell the story of the parents of one of the people in the group we are introduced to in the early part of the book and return to in the final stages.
A lot of people have hated this book, but I loved it. For me, Levy is better the longer her books are. I've read some of her shorter works and they are beautiful and strange, but I think her longer works are more engrossing. I really enjoyed reading this, even if I am not 100% sure at the end that I know what was actually going on.
July 5, 2023
This early Levy novel was not what I expected. I thought it would be more of a ‘holiday’ read but it’s actually pretty bleak and uncomfortable. Even though I was left with some questions at the end of the book, I found it very fascinating and as always well written.
August 24, 2018
An unpleasant story about unpleasant people in an unpleasant place. Now, I'm okay with that--reading only books about pleasant people is silly and stupidly limiting-- but I need a payoff, something that makes spending so much time with unpleasant people in their unpleasant story seem worth it. There's some lovely writing here, and a few good moments, but not enough to make reading the book seem worthwhile. I was glad to be done with it, and that's never a good sign.
June 23, 2014
I actually feel drained...and it all lead to nowhereville.... how sad. and the pages blurred and they killed a white rat that was really a princesses unicorn, but the clock didn't strike midnight and the queen wore her glitter hairnet to the fish market whilst the mexican boy traveled the world only to wake and find out he hadn't really traveled anywhere but he was sleeping with the princess wearing her black ballet shoes. Makes sense? good!
February 29, 2024
One of Levy's earlier novels, I came to this after reading and loving her living biographies, and Swimming Home, Hot Milk, The Man Who Saw Everything... Of course this book is quite different, but I enjoyed it. Although at the beginning I kept getting confused by the large cast of characters the mystery plot and Levy's writing style pulled me back in. I especially loved the eerie way that she wrote the two young daughters-it felt truthful, however disturbing. Dark, moody, and dreamy, this truly felt like a "murder in the dark" story. Set in a vacation cottage with characters each from Poland, Algeria, America, England, Italy, France, and Germany. Sharp writing!
July 23, 2020
The Unloved is an unsettling novel, primarily because at its core, it concerns Western violence inflicted upon Algeria in its struggle for independence which began almost as soon as WWII ended. But it is also unsettling because it begins as a comedy of manners amongst rich tourists who come to a chateau in Normandy to spend the Christmas holidays. That something is going on is apparent from the beginning because there is a dead body and an 11-year old girl says she knows who did it. But nothing is told straight here, even the characters are sometimes referred to by nationality (the American, the Algerian) and two girls of different parents may be called "princesses" based on whether they are wearing a paper crown. There is a further layer of puzzling, since the time is the 90s with the integration of Eastern Europe into the West, which to a European reader may be memorable, but to an American has become obscure. This layer is not intended by Levy, since she published this poetic but gothic (a chateau is a Castle, of course, and death surrounds tourists (suicide, overdose, bombs, torture) novel in 1994. By its end it feels like a deconstructed Agatha Christie novel, or rather one of revenge of the colonized who often played incidental and mechanical roles in British mysteries during its age of Empire. For the most insistent conflict is that of Nancy the American to learn more about her mother who lived the 60s expat life in Tangiers, but killed herself in a situation that recalls that of Jane Bowles, another American woman abroad in North Africa playing helpmeet to her genius husband (a physicist whose research is on time), and stifling her own talent. Yasmina the Algerian crossed paths awkwardly in Algeria as a teenager with Jane, Nancy's mother (named one should think to evoke Bowles), and remembers telling details about her. The remainder of this crossing is a diary that fascinates illicitly the two daughters, and Yasmina's memories, which will evoke moments of the revolution in Algeria, and helpfully provide more connected narration, but only just. Covering allusively so much material in short space necessitates Levy's dry but evocative sentences that linger because of their precision, but deceive in how direct they are. One persists in reading because of the sentences, but perhaps at one's peril, since the comforts of a Christie are not anywhere to be seen. The novel also divides its characters from the unloved and loved, but by the end the distinction seems minimal. Even the cat who figures in the plot is not universally loved, and is found purring on the belly of the dead Mary, herself not discerned as gone until long after the night she died. Perhaps by the end, The Unloved should be called a bleak comedy, as it offers none of the comforts of superiority usually delivered by a black comedy. There are more recent books by Levy, including the Swimming Party, which seem to promise the same conjunction of readerly pleasure, and mordant social and psychological analysis. In the end, it destroys the fashionable construct of newspaper reviewer, that ironic and athwart ways of telling render a story schematic. No, what they do in this case is deliver a more powerful blow as one never knows what is coming next.
March 31, 2024
This is what would happen if you crossed Agatha Christie with Angela Carter and I am 100% here for it. A rag tag assortment of wealthy people are holidaying in a French chateau, owned by a hostess who is absent and appears only through brief telephone conversations. As the strangers bond, or don't, their back stories are revealed gradually through conversations and confrontations. At the heart of it all is the mysterious death, possibly murder of an unhappy English woman whose death is being investigated by a sinister, French police inspector. As the group fragments around the central death, their stories come into sharper focus and the bigger picture is more tragic than the death of a woman who was already contemplating suicide when she arrived. Off kilter, slightly surreal and beautifully atmospheric.
January 13, 2024
Levy dubbed this small, strange little book a rehearsal for her second novel Swimming Home and it’s easy to see why. They both feature a European holiday and a wide cast of characters, and you can see Levy working out her style with this book. It has that familiar dream-like quality her later works have and the writing is as sharp as ever, but there’s something missing in this book.
There’s an unfocused feel to this book and it meanders. Whether intentional or not it’s sometimes hard to keep track of who is who and what is actually happening, and although it’s a short book it feels much less concise that Levy’s later works. I could not tell you what this book was actually about. I don’t necessarily think it’s bad though but would hesitate to say I enjoyed it. Sometimes books can be little experiments for the writers and The Unloved certainly is that for Levy, so at least we have this book to thank for her later novels.
There’s an unfocused feel to this book and it meanders. Whether intentional or not it’s sometimes hard to keep track of who is who and what is actually happening, and although it’s a short book it feels much less concise that Levy’s later works. I could not tell you what this book was actually about. I don’t necessarily think it’s bad though but would hesitate to say I enjoyed it. Sometimes books can be little experiments for the writers and The Unloved certainly is that for Levy, so at least we have this book to thank for her later novels.
July 2, 2019
Deborah Levy‘s early novel “The Unloved” was odd and felt disconnected. I didn’t really understand what was going on and therefore didn’t enjoy reading it very much – 1 star.
My full review is available on my blog: https://whatrebeccasread.wordpress.co...
My full review is available on my blog: https://whatrebeccasread.wordpress.co...
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January 21, 2024Not my favourite of Levy’s books, I found this one quite hard to follow!
December 14, 2015
Due to the success of Swimming Home getting a Man Booker shortlisting in 2012, Deborah Levy’s 1995 novel The Unloved was edited and republished earlier this year. I have been a fan of Levy since discovering Swimming Home thanks to the Man Booker and I admit I was a little slack getting to her backlist. I read her collection of short stories last year and finally returned to another novel with The Unloved.
The Unloved tells the story of a group of self-indulgent European tourists who decide to celebrate Christmas in a remote French chateau. However during their stay one of them is brutally murdered and the unloved child Tatiana knows who did it. The subsequent investigation into this death turns more into an examination of love, desire and rage. This is a shocking and exciting novel, full of characters you can’t help but suspect of murder.
There is something strangely familiar with this novel; while it had a different plot to Swimming Home, the themes felt very much alike. Both tell a psychological story of love and desire that is full of Freudian ideas. There is a philosophical feel about these novels as Levy forces the reader to think about life and death in an interesting way. In The Unloved it becomes less about the murder, and focuses more about a psychoanalytical look at the rest of the people in the French chateau.
The writing within The Unloved may not be as beautiful as Swimming Home but it was still wonderful. There is a strong sense of symbolism flowing through out the narrative and from time to time wonderfully elegant writing. I am not trying to dismiss this novel at all; it has its moments and I admire Levy’s wry style.
I feel the book explored the same themes as Swimming Home, just not as refined. It is weird to judge a book by its themes, Deborah Levy has a keen interest on the topic and passionate about exploring it. The Unloved is worth checking out; the plot and characters are all magnificent. I just would have preferred if the book explored these themes from a different perspective.
This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2014/...
The Unloved tells the story of a group of self-indulgent European tourists who decide to celebrate Christmas in a remote French chateau. However during their stay one of them is brutally murdered and the unloved child Tatiana knows who did it. The subsequent investigation into this death turns more into an examination of love, desire and rage. This is a shocking and exciting novel, full of characters you can’t help but suspect of murder.
There is something strangely familiar with this novel; while it had a different plot to Swimming Home, the themes felt very much alike. Both tell a psychological story of love and desire that is full of Freudian ideas. There is a philosophical feel about these novels as Levy forces the reader to think about life and death in an interesting way. In The Unloved it becomes less about the murder, and focuses more about a psychoanalytical look at the rest of the people in the French chateau.
The writing within The Unloved may not be as beautiful as Swimming Home but it was still wonderful. There is a strong sense of symbolism flowing through out the narrative and from time to time wonderfully elegant writing. I am not trying to dismiss this novel at all; it has its moments and I admire Levy’s wry style.
I feel the book explored the same themes as Swimming Home, just not as refined. It is weird to judge a book by its themes, Deborah Levy has a keen interest on the topic and passionate about exploring it. The Unloved is worth checking out; the plot and characters are all magnificent. I just would have preferred if the book explored these themes from a different perspective.
This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2014/...
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December 31, 2021”It is time for pleasure. Forget love. Live and yearn. Enjoy good cheese and bread. Choose your friends with care. Stroke small animals that become your companions. Grow old disappointed but laughing.”
The Unloved alkaa kuvauksella sekalaisesta porukasta, joka on kokoontunut viettämään joulua ranskalaisessa linnassa, josta löytyy ruumis. Välillä henkilöistä puhutaan etunimellä, välillä taas heihin viitataan heidän kansalaisuutensa kautta. Tämä käytäntö tekee solmuja lukijan päähän, mutta se ei ole vielä mitään sen rinnalla, mitä on tulossa.
Nimittäin. Yhtäkkiä hypätään sekä ajassa että paikassa. Eikä kyse ole mistään pienestä ja vaatimattomasta loikasta. Muutun kysymysmerkiksi. Nauran ja hämmästelen. Siis että mitä!
Tämä kirja on niille, joille oleellista ei ole juoni. Tämä kirja on niille, jotka nauttivat siitä, että tarina tarjoaa aukkoja ja pitää lukijaa epävarmuuden tilassa. Tämä kirja on niille, jotka rakastavat taitavaa kielen käyttöä.
The Unloved on mahtava tapaus kaikin puolin. Sen lukeminen saa liekehtimään. Joissakin dialogin loistavuuskohdissa muistelin DeLillon Esittäjää. Levyllä on kyky kirjoittaa niin, että ihan tavallisetkin lauseet saavat tämän teoksen kontekstista päälleen ihmeellistä moniäänisyyttä ja värähtelyä.
Pari herkkua:
”The unloved watch the loved perform the small rituals of their loving.”
”I am too rich to work. […] My husband is a good bank. He does not charge me interest.”
“It is a disappointment to me to spawn a child who feels so deeply. I would like to refute the idea that to feel somehow makes you a better person.”
”I pursue my case, Monsieur, I speak English, Italian and German, and I want justice in all three languages. I have been damaged by unlove.”
The Unloved alkaa kuvauksella sekalaisesta porukasta, joka on kokoontunut viettämään joulua ranskalaisessa linnassa, josta löytyy ruumis. Välillä henkilöistä puhutaan etunimellä, välillä taas heihin viitataan heidän kansalaisuutensa kautta. Tämä käytäntö tekee solmuja lukijan päähän, mutta se ei ole vielä mitään sen rinnalla, mitä on tulossa.
Nimittäin. Yhtäkkiä hypätään sekä ajassa että paikassa. Eikä kyse ole mistään pienestä ja vaatimattomasta loikasta. Muutun kysymysmerkiksi. Nauran ja hämmästelen. Siis että mitä!
Tämä kirja on niille, joille oleellista ei ole juoni. Tämä kirja on niille, jotka nauttivat siitä, että tarina tarjoaa aukkoja ja pitää lukijaa epävarmuuden tilassa. Tämä kirja on niille, jotka rakastavat taitavaa kielen käyttöä.
The Unloved on mahtava tapaus kaikin puolin. Sen lukeminen saa liekehtimään. Joissakin dialogin loistavuuskohdissa muistelin DeLillon Esittäjää. Levyllä on kyky kirjoittaa niin, että ihan tavallisetkin lauseet saavat tämän teoksen kontekstista päälleen ihmeellistä moniäänisyyttä ja värähtelyä.
Pari herkkua:
”The unloved watch the loved perform the small rituals of their loving.”
”I am too rich to work. […] My husband is a good bank. He does not charge me interest.”
“It is a disappointment to me to spawn a child who feels so deeply. I would like to refute the idea that to feel somehow makes you a better person.”
”I pursue my case, Monsieur, I speak English, Italian and German, and I want justice in all three languages. I have been damaged by unlove.”
January 4, 2018
couldn't quite stay up enough to finish this one, which tells me a bit about my not-quite-love of the story... Levy has a overwhelming style, she comes at you from so many directions and angles with her phrases and adjectives and verbs and imagery from somewhere else... her characters are full to the brim with life and feelings and purpose... this novel(la?) was on some tangent of sorts from her other books - Beautiful Mutants and Swallowing Geography - more of a narrative or plot or something less unstructured... took me a while to get adapted, and i'm still unsure how i feel about it... a study in/of people and their lives laid bare... a bit of food, a bit of sex, a bit of play... and she drops that ending, well, right at the end... yes, worth the read...
January 18, 2026
I’ve seen a lot of reviews complain about the large cast of characters and confusing naming conventions in this novel. I myself happen to be knee-deep in Anna Karenina at the moment, so I’ve got my confusing-naming-convention muscles feeling super pumped and honestly found very little confusion there. Really really enjoyed The Unloved, especially that middle section.
November 8, 2024
3.5 stars. At times frustrating and annoying, the characters are cleverly written. I’m not giving up on Levy. I shall read more.
February 19, 2025
DNF
It pains me but I cannot finish this - I’m just not enjoying it and I am firmly against finishing a book for the sake of it. I don’t think the writing itself is bad, but I’m finding the characterisation, pacing and plot unconvincing and too dull to convince me to give this more of a chance.
It pains me but I cannot finish this - I’m just not enjoying it and I am firmly against finishing a book for the sake of it. I don’t think the writing itself is bad, but I’m finding the characterisation, pacing and plot unconvincing and too dull to convince me to give this more of a chance.
November 29, 2023
Only the cat, the agoraphobic cat , gets a character arc from Deborah Levy, in this unconventional,plot-dense, even crowded novel, one of her earlier books.
"Biddy Ba Ba sits on the roof of the barn, hypnotized by the snow falling in slow- motion on to the cedars. Where once the agonizing vista of open space made his fur rise as he hid behind chairs and under beds, now he wants to be outside for ever."
Then, the novel is summed up so to speak, by the following profound words- said in monologue by the cat
"If anything, the frightening place is inside. The danger zones are interiors. Inside is where fearful things happen. Not even snow will force the beast to shelter there "
"Biddy Ba Ba sits on the roof of the barn, hypnotized by the snow falling in slow- motion on to the cedars. Where once the agonizing vista of open space made his fur rise as he hid behind chairs and under beds, now he wants to be outside for ever."
Then, the novel is summed up so to speak, by the following profound words- said in monologue by the cat
"If anything, the frightening place is inside. The danger zones are interiors. Inside is where fearful things happen. Not even snow will force the beast to shelter there "
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 28, 2024
Not an easy book to read, but I believe still a very good one. You are cast in a maze of weirdness and symbolism and absurdity, and what you get from it is getting to know a bunch of very unlikable characters. If that isn‘t fun, I don‘t know what is.
August 7, 2019
Here is a vivid and incisive narrative very nearly sunk by plot contrivances.
The bare bones of it are not promising: upper-class protagonists filled with secret anxieties gather in a vacation home in Brittany. Then, a dead body turns up, eliciting remarkable little uproar from the assembled house guests.
Where Levy succeeds, as in all of her works, is in her precise control of language, her economical scene-setting, and her attention to both the micro- and macro- scales. It's a little book with rather surprisingly large ambitions, and the author assuredly sketches both the corrosive effects distaff parents exert on their children, and the ways history's unsettled debts can haunt the present.
It is, therefore, a shame that outlandish plot machinations come close to fatally undermining the sublimely nuanced structure. (Without giving too much away, suffice to say that this is a story in which a pre-adolescent boy from Mexico manages to track down - in Northern France - the Spanish couple who adopted, and gave away to hospice care, his brain-damaged sister.)
Fortunately, the novel recovers, and does so by reasserting focus on character interactions rife with personal detail. Levy's use of perspective is supple and fluid, adeptly moving between viewpoints, often paragraph by paragraph. The effect is kaleidoscopic with out being showy. Likewise, the culminations of the various character arcs manage to be affecting without being maudlin. And that is saying something for a novel that features not one, but two abandoned illegitimate children, heroin addiction, cyber-porn, the Algerian war of independence; and which climaxes with a rape and suicide on the same night. One wonders - are all Breton holidays among the privileged classes so dramatic?
Nonetheless, Deborah Levy manages a unique sleight of hand, making an overstuffed narrative feel weightless. In the end, her novel is colorful, fascinating, and evokes a lingering discomfort, like a fading bruise.
The bare bones of it are not promising: upper-class protagonists filled with secret anxieties gather in a vacation home in Brittany. Then, a dead body turns up, eliciting remarkable little uproar from the assembled house guests.
Where Levy succeeds, as in all of her works, is in her precise control of language, her economical scene-setting, and her attention to both the micro- and macro- scales. It's a little book with rather surprisingly large ambitions, and the author assuredly sketches both the corrosive effects distaff parents exert on their children, and the ways history's unsettled debts can haunt the present.
It is, therefore, a shame that outlandish plot machinations come close to fatally undermining the sublimely nuanced structure. (Without giving too much away, suffice to say that this is a story in which a pre-adolescent boy from Mexico manages to track down - in Northern France - the Spanish couple who adopted, and gave away to hospice care, his brain-damaged sister.)
Fortunately, the novel recovers, and does so by reasserting focus on character interactions rife with personal detail. Levy's use of perspective is supple and fluid, adeptly moving between viewpoints, often paragraph by paragraph. The effect is kaleidoscopic with out being showy. Likewise, the culminations of the various character arcs manage to be affecting without being maudlin. And that is saying something for a novel that features not one, but two abandoned illegitimate children, heroin addiction, cyber-porn, the Algerian war of independence; and which climaxes with a rape and suicide on the same night. One wonders - are all Breton holidays among the privileged classes so dramatic?
Nonetheless, Deborah Levy manages a unique sleight of hand, making an overstuffed narrative feel weightless. In the end, her novel is colorful, fascinating, and evokes a lingering discomfort, like a fading bruise.
April 1, 2015
The stream of conscious narrative style, and the way in which the novel jumped back and forth through time did at times make the story a bit hard to follow. It is certainly the sort of book one needs to read carefully to pick up on all the details and subtleties, but that being said I found it to be a highly gripping read.
A group of tourists from various different countries are gathered together on vacation in a French Chateau. They are a collection of cynical, apathetic, self-serving individuals who all seem to be rather empty inside, and lacking love, they turn to pleasure, seeking any means to escape their lives. At times it is hard to keep track of who is sleeping with who as they enter into a rather hedonistic lifestyle with each other.
When one of their party, and English woman, Mary is suddenly found dead, through the course of the investigations into the murder we are offered glimpses into the lives of each of these individuals and they are like these little psychological portraits of each of these chararacters.
A group of tourists from various different countries are gathered together on vacation in a French Chateau. They are a collection of cynical, apathetic, self-serving individuals who all seem to be rather empty inside, and lacking love, they turn to pleasure, seeking any means to escape their lives. At times it is hard to keep track of who is sleeping with who as they enter into a rather hedonistic lifestyle with each other.
When one of their party, and English woman, Mary is suddenly found dead, through the course of the investigations into the murder we are offered glimpses into the lives of each of these individuals and they are like these little psychological portraits of each of these chararacters.
January 24, 2022
This is a lovely book, that gave me a lot of Hot Milk vibes. It is strange and eerie, but like most Levy novels incredibly well-written. A lot of people complain that the book is hard to follow, but this is the type of book where I am okay not fully understanding everything on the first read through.
The story is set in a vacation home with a large cast of characters that are hard to keep straight. Levy refers to them in different ways throughout the book, not always by their names. There are some characters that I felt I knew better by the end, but for most of the characters I didn't really feel like I got a full picture of them. However, I think that connects to a lot of the themes in the book.
Highly recommend this one!
The story is set in a vacation home with a large cast of characters that are hard to keep straight. Levy refers to them in different ways throughout the book, not always by their names. There are some characters that I felt I knew better by the end, but for most of the characters I didn't really feel like I got a full picture of them. However, I think that connects to a lot of the themes in the book.
Highly recommend this one!
September 5, 2019
I read Hot Milk and it blew me away and thought Levy was one of the most interesting contemporary writers I had ever read – then I read Swimming Home which made me a massive fan of hers and I started buying it for friends. So this book confuses me, I eagerly read it (and marked it highly) but it made such little impact on me that I just can’t remember anything about, indeed I actually forget I have read this so little did it imprint itself on me. I find this utterly perplexing. I can’t even ‘review’ it which tells you all you need to know. I will have to re-read it it’s a genuine mystery to me. I mean it sounds great!
June 7, 2014
Probably need to read it again. Of the three parts I liked the middle best. Yasmina the Algerian is the character that interested me the most. The scenes between the Italian woman and the police inspector were also well written. It's not as good as Swimming Home but then what is? Definitely worth a second read.
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March 21, 2012Clunky, odd and utterly unengaging. SUCH a beautiful cover it's a shame to abandon it ...
May 3, 2015
this book was "unloved" by me
June 25, 2015
Hypnotically depressing. The prose wavers between cerebral and poetic.
July 17, 2025
I've been reading a lot of Levy the past year, having first read her living memoirs and been struck by how much her observations (specifically of the experience of women) resonated and was both fresh and specific - not like the constant cycle of memes about how moms have it hard. From there I read some of her most recent fiction and recently started digging deeper into her past works, till I got to this book from 1996.
Levy is an excellent writer, and her books touch on difficult topics, and are often more crisis than redemption, but this one is particularly dark and unpleasant, without sympathetic characters--even though there are *many* characters. At the beginning, I kept flipping back and forth to keep the children straight as well as their respective mothers. It doesn't help that the American's first speech is in French (saying she's American) and a woman who seems like she could be French turns out to be Italian. Oh, and they're all in France, but only one person (and his daughter, I suppose) is actually French. During the flashback to Algeria I wasn't confused about who the characters were, but the bleakness was oppressing, and without a glimmer of hope in sight--but every prospect of tragedy and trauma--I made the unusual decision to put this one aside.
Levy is an excellent writer, and her books touch on difficult topics, and are often more crisis than redemption, but this one is particularly dark and unpleasant, without sympathetic characters--even though there are *many* characters. At the beginning, I kept flipping back and forth to keep the children straight as well as their respective mothers. It doesn't help that the American's first speech is in French (saying she's American) and a woman who seems like she could be French turns out to be Italian. Oh, and they're all in France, but only one person (and his daughter, I suppose) is actually French. During the flashback to Algeria I wasn't confused about who the characters were, but the bleakness was oppressing, and without a glimmer of hope in sight--but every prospect of tragedy and trauma--I made the unusual decision to put this one aside.
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