A tour de force of both style and substance from the author of Hot Milk, this hypnotic novel of fragmented identity and the desperate search for belonging in the world finds two women chasing their doubles across Europe.
'If she was my double and I was hers, was it true that she was knowing, I was unknowing, she was sane, I was crazy, she was wise, I was foolish? That summer, the air was electric between us as we transmitted our feelings to each other across three countries.'
Elsa M. Anderson is a classical piano virtuoso. In a flea market in Athens, she watches an enigmatic woman buy two mechanical dancing horses. Is it possible that the woman who is so enchanted with the horses is her living double? Is she also looking for reasons to live?
Chasing their doubles across Europe, the two women grapple with their preconceived conceptions of the world and each other, culminating in a final encounter in a fateful summer rainstorm.
A vivid portrait of a long-held identity coming apart, August Blue expands our understanding of the ways in which we seek to find ourselves in others and create ourselves anew.
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780241421314
Number of pages: 256
Weight: 377 g
Dimensions: 222 x 144 x 26 mm
Intelligent and absurd, precise and dream-like . . . I know of few other authors who can capture an atmosphere of the eerie and the bizarre as well as she does - The Scotsman
August Blue holds the remarkable balancing act that is key to Levy's writing: perfect precision at the sentence level combined with a dedication to exploring the slipperiness of reality - iNews
Playful inquisitiveness and lush descriptions balance out a bassline of melancholy . . . Nobody does enigmatic like Levy - Mail on Sunday
[Levy] can sketch a scene with a few precise brushstrokes and conjure emotion out of white space on the page. A recurring call and response between Elsa and her alter ego becomes a musical refrain that takes on ever new colors. Those familiar references to swimming and bees glint through like leitmotifs - Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, New York Times
A gleeful read . . . [Deborah Levy's] prose is as quick and bare as ever, her manner excitingly abrupt . . . You know you'll read August Blue again - M John Harrison, Guardian
Levy's lyrical, pitch-perfect prose, where every word is weighted with significance, is an exploration of our reasons for living, the forces that drive us and the inner music that controls the rhythms of our dance through life and love - Independent
This is a stunner - Publishers Weekly
Deborah Levy's work inspires a devotion few literary authors ever achieve - Charlotte Higgins, Guardian
August Blue is Levy's eighth novel, and since her 20s, she has been refining her ability to evoke feeling through writing rather than to narrate it. Her work is deeply influenced by art forms that express the embodied experience, like cinema and dance . . . Levy's writing is psychologically complex - Simran Hans, New York Times
[An] enigmatic novel . . . Deborah Levy's writing is rather like Philip Glass's music . . . mesmerising . . . enigmatic . . . refreshingly original - Amber Medland, Daily Telegraph
[A] wistful, fabular new novel . . . Since the 1990s, Deborah Levy's novels have combined a gauzy, episodic quality with pinpoint sensual detail drawn from peripatetic lives, crossing fluently between languages and national borders. Her style is full of gaps and sharp edges, circling around questions of gender and power, inheritance, autonomy and lack . . . The narrative here has a fittingly musical quality, running forward in spurts, pausing, repeating key phrases - Olivia Laing, Observer
Beautifully atmospheric . . . a dazzling portrait of melancholy and renewal . . . Levy is a master novelist and in August Blue, a beguiling story of how identities collide and crack, she shows us what it feels like to be a divided self - Independent ‘Best Books of 2023’
Deborah Levy delves into the deepest patterns of family connection and self-invention in August Blue, the riddling, elegant tale of a globe-trotting concert pianist whose subconscious is catching up with her - Guardian, 'Best Books of 2023'
Deborah Levy's hazy, dreamlike novels, often set in sun-drenched Mediterranean backdrops, are an essential accompaniment to any summer holiday . . . a lyrical, surreal trip of self discovery - one that is full of Levy's wit and curious images - Leila Slimani, i
A meditation on artistic creativity that is sensual, enigmatic and strangely addictive - Financial Times 'What to Read this Summer'
Levy is no stranger to the uncanny. Her novels teem with oddness, with dreamlike, vertiginous scenes - Lara Pawson, Times Literary Supplement
Levy's elegantly ludic investigation into selfhood, mother love and meaning - Guardian, '2023 Summer Reads'
Levy fans will delight in August Blue’s heady exploration of female creativity - Financial Times, 'Best Books of 2023'
Deborah Levy is one of the most creative writers of contemporary English literature. August Blue is an interesting, experimental novel about a young women’s search for her identity and happiness (or maybe a search for... More
August Blue by Deborah Levy
A gifted pianist, Elsa arrives in Athens, where she sees a mysterious women buying toy horses at a souvenir stall. Who is this person and why does she keep following her around Europe?...
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I went from enjoying and appreciating Levy's novels to becoming slightly obsessed with her last year after reading her autobiographical trilogy, which were superb. Then I listened to her being interviewed on The... More
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