The position of spoons : and other intimacies

Title:

Author:

Summary:

Levy shares with us her most tender thoughts as she traces and measures her life against the backdrop of different literary imaginations; each page is a beautiful, questioning composition of the self. The Position of Spoons is full of wisdom and astonishments and brings us into intimate conversation with one of our most insightful, intellectually curious writers.-- Goodreads

Edition:

First American edition.

Physical Description:

161 pages : portrait ; 22 cm

Genre:

Autobiographies.

Essays.

Subject Term:

Authors, English -- 20th century -- Biography.

Authors, English -- 21st Century -- Biography.

Publisher:

Farrar, Straus and Giroux,

Publication Date:

2024

ISBN:

9780374614973

Publication Information:

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024.

Call Number:

824 LEVY

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003757435	New Adult Nonfiction	824 LEVY	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

A feast of observations about everything from the particular beauty of lemons on a table, to the allure of Colette, to the streets of Paris, by the inimitable Deborah Levy.

Deborah Levy's vital literary voice speaks about many things.

On footwear: "It has always been very clear to me that people who wear shoes without socks are destined to become my friends and lovers." On public parks: "A civic garden square gentles the pace of the city that surrounds it, holding a thought before it scrambles." On Elizabeth Hardwick: "She understands what is at stake in literature." On the conclusion of a marriage: "It doesn't take an alien to tell us that when love dies we have to find another way of being alive."

Levy shares with us her most tender thoughts as she traces and measures her life against the backdrop of different literary imaginations; each page is a beautiful, questioning composition of the self. The Position of Spoons is full of wisdom and astonishments and brings us into intimate conversation with one of our most insightful, intellectually curious writers.

Author Notes

Deborah Levy writes fiction, plays, and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, broadcast on the BBC, and widely translated. She is the author of several highly praised novels, including The Man Who Saw Everything (long-listed for the Booker Prize), Hot Milk and Swimming Home (both Man Booker Prize finalists), The Unloved, and Billy and Girl ; the acclaimed story collection Black Vodka ; and a three-part autobiography, Things I Don't Want to Know , The Cost of Living , and Real Estate . She lives in London and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Novelist and playwright Levy (August Blue) delivers a dazzling collection of musings on art, aging, psychoanalysis, celebrity car crashes, and more. The stylish essays--some as brief as one page--run the gamut from funny reflections on the Mona Lisa ("Her hair looks uncared for under her hood. She probably has lice") and oral sex ("a super sport that should be included in the Olympic games") to weightier considerations of the human tendency to look away from discomfort. Of model and photographer Lee Miller, whose career took her from fashion runways to documenting the liberation of Buchenwald, Levy writes, "she both hides from and gives herself to the camera." Taken together, Levy's extraordinary observations (eggs are "sculptures" that "have the added uncanny allure of being an artwork that is made inside the body of a hen") amount to a trip through a consciousness trained to deeply consider everything it encounters--be it a pair of shoes, a bowl of lemons, or the work of Simone de Beauvoir. "There is the story and then there is everything else," Levy posits. Here, she gives space to everything else, with sublime results. Readers will be grateful for this generous peek inside a singular mind. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency. (Oct.)