Position of Spoons, The

From twice Booker-shortlisted author Deborah Levy, a feast of observations about everything from the particular beauty of lemons on a table, to the muses that have shaped her life, to the streets of Paris.

In The Position of Spoons, Deborah Levy invites us into the interiors of her world, sharing her most intimate thoughts and experiences, as she traces and measures her life against the backdrop of the literary and artistic muses that have shaped her.

From Marguerite Duras to Colette and Ballard, and from Lee Miller to Francesca Woodman and Paula Rego, we can relish here the richness of their work and, in turn, the richness of the author’s own.

Each page draws upon Levy’s life in exalting ways, encapsulating the wonderful precision and astonishing depth of her writing, as she seamlessly shifts between and mediates on questions of morality, language, suburbia, gender, consumerism, and the poetics of everyday living. From the child born in South Africa, to her teenage years in Britain, to her travels across the world as a young woman, each page is a beautiful, tender composition of the questioning self: a portrait of Deborah Levy’s writing life and intellectual vitality in all its dimensions.