Hot Milk

Deborah Levy explores the strange and monstrous nature of motherhood, testing the bonds of parent and child to breaking point.

Two strangers arrive in a small Spanish fishing village. The older woman is suffering from mysterious paralysis, driven to seek a cure beyond the bounds of conventional medicine. Her daughter Sofia has spent years playing the reluctant detective in this mystery, struggling to understand her mother's illness. Surrounded by the oppressive desert heat, searching for a cure to a defiant and quite possibly imagined disease, Sofia is forced to confront her difficult relationship with her mother.

"What makes the book so good is Ms Levy’s great imagination, the poetry of her language, her way of finding the wonder in the every day, of saying a lot with a little, of moving gracefully among pathos, danger and humor and of providing a character as interesting and surprising as Sofia. It’s a pleasure to be inside Sofia’s insightful, questioning mind."  -  Sarah Lyall, The New York Times

Deborah Levy is the author of seven novels, and she has been shortlisted twice for the Goldsmiths Prize and three times for the Booker Prize. Her novels include Beautiful Mutants, Swallowing Geography, The Unloved, Billy and Girl, Swimming Home, Hot Milk and The Man Who Saw Everything and her short story collection, Black Vodka, was nominated for the International Frank O’Connor Short Story Award.