Thank you for this insightful post. Even when I don’t love Levy (loved Hot Milk and Swimming Home; The Man Who Saw Everything less) there is always something to be gleaned. The Cost of Living has a permanent spot on my desk with the other books I turn to when I’m feeling stuck or frustrated.
Exactly! I'm a firm believer that you can take what you resonate with from a writer and leave the rest! I couldn't get into The Man Who Saw Everything, either.
Really enjoyed this post Kate! As I mentioned previously, 'Swimming Home' knocked my socks off. Levy is queen of symbols! (Spoilers ahead...) There is Kitty Finch whose name is this unholy marriage between cat and bird. It captured, for me, her occupying a borderline between predator and prey. At times she is the bird. She wears the feathered cape when she goes out with Joe. She is perhaps prey in that scenario - the vulnerable bird - but then later buys the blue sugar mouse. It seems to mark the changeover to cat. The dynamic between her and Joe shifts in the car home. She is knowing and in control. At other times, in cat mode, she arranges the rabbit tails in a vase and puts Nina's toy rabbit in Mitchell's rat trap. She has an animal quality in her predisposition towards nudity. Is Kitty some sort of personification of depression? Bird and Cat. Both vulnerable and vicious. Water, the pool, seems to symbolise death - it's described at one point as a concrete coffin or something. Swimming home is committing suicide..
Then poems seem to symbolise loaded weapons. Isabel says that Joe had 'buried unexploded shells and grenades across the roads and tracks of all his books, they were under every poem.' And Kitty's poem is also like a loaded weapon. This is what she has handed him. At one point Nina looks under her parents bed and finds Kitty's poem and Mitchell's antique gun. Their placement together seems important. The poem is interchangeable with the gun. It can be used to the same effect.
There is also the weird and ugly creature Joe finds in the river with Nina and brings back to the house in a bucket. He brings these weird, unnamed, ugly, frightening things to the surface - as in his poetry perhaps. Things that others - Laura and Mitchell - would prefer to remain locked away out of sight - Laura is frightened when the creature almost escapes out of the bucket. There seems to be something important about the fact that this creature lives in, and has been excavated out of, water. It's a different element away from the human world. Humans can't survive there. Maybe it's the subconscious. Maybe its another dimension away from the everyday. A buried hard-to-reach dimension. I don't know.
Sorry for this long comment Kate. I am very boring and longwinded. And clogging up the comments section! But I did love this book. I'll get to Hot Milk next.
Thanks, Tash! Yes, Kitty Finch is an interesting and complex character. Levy's work is full of them. Hot Milk is also littered with symbolic imagery. I think you'll enjoy!
This was a great read. It is so good to see smaller publishers take a risk on someone and that really paid off. Great piece.
Thanks! 😀
Thank you for this insightful post. Even when I don’t love Levy (loved Hot Milk and Swimming Home; The Man Who Saw Everything less) there is always something to be gleaned. The Cost of Living has a permanent spot on my desk with the other books I turn to when I’m feeling stuck or frustrated.
Exactly! I'm a firm believer that you can take what you resonate with from a writer and leave the rest! I couldn't get into The Man Who Saw Everything, either.
Really enjoyed this post Kate! As I mentioned previously, 'Swimming Home' knocked my socks off. Levy is queen of symbols! (Spoilers ahead...) There is Kitty Finch whose name is this unholy marriage between cat and bird. It captured, for me, her occupying a borderline between predator and prey. At times she is the bird. She wears the feathered cape when she goes out with Joe. She is perhaps prey in that scenario - the vulnerable bird - but then later buys the blue sugar mouse. It seems to mark the changeover to cat. The dynamic between her and Joe shifts in the car home. She is knowing and in control. At other times, in cat mode, she arranges the rabbit tails in a vase and puts Nina's toy rabbit in Mitchell's rat trap. She has an animal quality in her predisposition towards nudity. Is Kitty some sort of personification of depression? Bird and Cat. Both vulnerable and vicious. Water, the pool, seems to symbolise death - it's described at one point as a concrete coffin or something. Swimming home is committing suicide..
Then poems seem to symbolise loaded weapons. Isabel says that Joe had 'buried unexploded shells and grenades across the roads and tracks of all his books, they were under every poem.' And Kitty's poem is also like a loaded weapon. This is what she has handed him. At one point Nina looks under her parents bed and finds Kitty's poem and Mitchell's antique gun. Their placement together seems important. The poem is interchangeable with the gun. It can be used to the same effect.
There is also the weird and ugly creature Joe finds in the river with Nina and brings back to the house in a bucket. He brings these weird, unnamed, ugly, frightening things to the surface - as in his poetry perhaps. Things that others - Laura and Mitchell - would prefer to remain locked away out of sight - Laura is frightened when the creature almost escapes out of the bucket. There seems to be something important about the fact that this creature lives in, and has been excavated out of, water. It's a different element away from the human world. Humans can't survive there. Maybe it's the subconscious. Maybe its another dimension away from the everyday. A buried hard-to-reach dimension. I don't know.
Sorry for this long comment Kate. I am very boring and longwinded. And clogging up the comments section! But I did love this book. I'll get to Hot Milk next.
Thanks, Tash! Yes, Kitty Finch is an interesting and complex character. Levy's work is full of them. Hot Milk is also littered with symbolic imagery. I think you'll enjoy!
Thanks Kate. I don’t think I’ve read her work but I saw yesterday that she has a collection of essays out.
Ooh, good time to check her out then!