August Blue is about Elsa, a talented musician who one day in a market sees someone who she thinks is her double and then she becomes obsessed. Elsa is having issues with her identity.
I recently read Deborah Levy's The Man Who Saw Everything and I loved it. This new book might seem different from her popular Swimming Home and Hot Milk but still is mesmerising.

<i>How do we know what we know?</i>

I think this is honestly the best Deborah Levy novel I've read so far??? Yes, better than <i>Swimming Home</i> and <i>Hot Milk.</i> I think she is an absolute GENIUS. Such a pleasure to read on the level of a sentence and yet also such a well-told, satisfying story. I had no idea what this book was about so I recommend reading as little about it as possible because its unexpected directions provided a lot of readerly pleasure for me. I SOOO admire the way she uses echoes, repetition, and parallel images - the resonance of a pair of horses is particularly key. As is the theme of the double. And I loved the subtext of characters wearing masks. The sensual sensory details, the killer one liners.... it's all just incredibly readable in terms of storytelling, and also beautifully complex in terms of language, theme, and imagery. LOVED IT. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

<i>We agreed that whatever happened next in the world, we would still rub conditioner into our hair after we washed it and comb it through to the ends, we would soften our lips with rose-, strawberry- and cherryscented balm.

We were all striding out into the world once again to infect and be infected by each other.

The obligation to keep the life drive going strong when death is our ultimate destiny.

Think of all the beautiful things you can do now, he whispered.

It was a shock to weep so loudly through a commercial for fabric softener.

I became neurotic at twenty when I started to drink avocado smoothies and tried to only think positive thoughts.

What I really missed in the lockdowns was buying a coffee. Sipping a flat white. If my identity is so fragile it depends on a flat white to keep it together, I can't see the point of those years I've spent reading difficult theory and philosophy. Capitalism sold a flat white to me as if it were a cup of freedom.

I did not want to plunge a fork into my life and look at it too closely.

I was still in love with Isadora's bare feet and arms. It was a way to be in the world. Upwards and outwards.</i>

A strange and dreamy narrative, this is not one of lovers of a propulsive plot, but if you’re prepared to be swept up in Levy’s glorious writing it’s a pleasure.

Well, as they say there is a lot to unpick here - but I am slightly concerned that if I unpick it too much there will be a jumble of randomness, not completely dissimilar to the original text.
There is a main character, I didn’t feel emotionally tied to her and she seemed to be experiencing some form of paranoia but it is all very unclear. She has a number of random teaching assignments which didn’t add much to the plot.
Suddenly towards the end there is an emphasis on her not quite adoptive father and the identity of her mother. I was waiting the big satisfying reveal but it was more of a damp murmur.
All very odd.

Elsa was a child prodigy who is “gifted” to a maestro who becomes her mentor.

Elsa is in Athens and sees someone who she thinks is her double buying mechanical dancing horses. Elsa becomes obsessed with the woman and sees her as she moves through London, Paris and back to Greece.

Some overly writing. According to the publishers this is “a story of split selves, wayward selves, feminities sexualities, avatars, shadows, reflections, alter egos and the twin poles of compassion and cruelty that exist within all of us.” Maybe so but it didn’t come together for me.

Also, the tomatillos that I have had have been small and green:
“He mostly existed on cheese-flavoured crisps until we discovered the hotel staff served a tomatillo for breakfast every morning. Shaped like a large egg, its taste was sweet and sour, invigorating, maybe similar to a passion fruit. “

Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via Netgallery.

August Blue by Deborah Levy is about a woman struggling with her career as a talented pianist and with her identity and sense of self having been raised by her teacher who is now elderly and dying. The way Levy writes is so effective and effortless and full of perfect details.

As much as I love Levy's writing and her outstanding 'living autobiography' volumes, I struggled somewhat with this. As usual, there's much of interest here, not least the fact that the central character is a famous pianist - but it's hard to see how the vision of the book coheres. There's doubling and shadowing, something that literature has been dealing with forever though here it's not a Gothic doppelganger sort of mirroring, and is something more opaque. I was left by the end as puzzled as I was entertained - but I miss the more direct and funny Levy from the memoirs.