A review by sertzo19
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Hot Milk was a weird fucking read. I’m not sure if it was brilliant or terrible but could it be both and also boring at the same time? 😅 Having studied anthropology and read a shit ton of ethnographies I think I understand the writing style the author was going for but ultimately it didn’t work for me. There are some passages where you can’t discern a single thing that’s going on or distinguish between what’s happening, the narrator’s POV or the writer’s prose. The book had me for about half the novel despite problems I had with the writing style but once we moved to Greece, the story stopped dead in its tracks and it never really recovered. I do have to say that as the child of a parent who is struggling with depression, there were some really insightful passages here that helped me put into words things I’ve felt but could never say, which makes this review so much harder to write. I was rooting for you Hot Milk… WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU!!!!!!