Description

Shortlisted for the 2013 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award

‘Elisa said Yes and I said Yes. We said Yes in all the European languages. Yes. We said yes we said yes, yes to vague but powerful things, we said yes to hope which has to be vague, we said yes to love which is always blind, we smiled and said yes without blinking.’ (‘A Better Way to Live’)

How does love change us? And how do we change ourselves for love – or for lack of it? Ten stories by acclaimed author Deborah Levy explore these delicate, impossible questions. In Vienna, an icy woman seduces a broken man; in London, a bird mimics an old-fashioned telephone; in adland, a sleek copywriter becomes a kind of shaman. These are twenty-first century lives dissected with razor-sharp humour and curiosity, stories about what it means to live and love, together and alone.

Publisher Review

'These tales of unconventional love reinforce Levy's reputation as a major contemporary writer who never pulls her punches.' The Independent 'Metropolitan and knowingly sophisticated.' Sunday Times 'These ominous, odd, erotic stories burrow deep into your brain.' Financial Times 'A collection of mischievous vignettes of Mitteleuropa.' The Telegraph 'Like their protagonists, these stories are powerful because they are fragmentary, elliptical.' The Guardian 'Levy's pen is a volatile weapon.' The Observer 'Levy sensitively conveys the phenomenology of textures, of skin and breath. Embedded in her coiled, polished sentences is the drive that pushes us together, and forces us apart.' Times Literary Supplement 'There is a sexy hauteur in Levy's prose.' New Statesman