Deborah Levy is the greatest living writer

And no movie based on her work is good ... yet?

If I can make a recommendation, find an author that has the bibliography to support it and try to exclusively read their work when you are on vacation. My relationship with Deborah Levy’s work is hot, humid, Mediterranean; and I’m fairly sure that’s because I have read her books on grotty European beaches covered in pebbles, exclusively. Every Levy book feels like a dream I had once: there’s a beach house, a getaway somewhere, someone probably has lingering wartime trauma, signs and symbols and strangeness like a half-remembered dream. Objects stick out: a horse in August Blue and the fedora of the main character’s doppleganger (August Blue is strange and could be seen as a riff on Disney’s Frozen, honestly?), jellyfish in Hot Milk, and there’s the naked interloper’s body in Swimming Home.

I’ve read, and loved Levy’s “living autobiography,” her series of nonfiction ruminations on a writer’s life which numbers about three books, and they are similar to her novels insofar as she doesn’t write in a straight line, is nearly allergic to it, as far as I can tell. She’s insightful and quick and can dazzle you with a sentence, and these insights are earned, partially because the pleasures of her thought come from the way she is always describing things anew: “A female writer cannot afford to feel her life too clearly. If she does, she will write in a rage when she should write calmly.”

There is a formidable backlist for Levy, and naturally, of course her books are in various stages of adaptation by Hollywood. But I wouldn’t say it’s Hollywood that adapted her books, both Swimming Home and Hot Milk got small, indie adaptations from experimental British directors. It’s been interesting to see these movies. They’re very flawed and not very good but you can figure out what drew the artists to Levy’s work—the strong imagery, the dreamlike atmosphere, the way that there are symbols everywhere that could be unforgettable on film. And while the actors try their best I just think somehow Levy’s works don’t translate to film because you cannot get the hothouse atmosphere quite right. Swimming Home makes some of the ugliest choices I’ve seen on film, whether it’s featuring experimental dancing where people look like gremlins or the most hideous unreadable font, shots that are just upside down for no reason, and the main character’s war-related trauma is updated to a more current one that involves Croatia as opposed to the Holocaust; but it just feels like La Piscine at the end of the day.

Hot Milk is the better movie, I think, as it’s about a mother-daughter relationship on a tense holiday in Spain, and the writer/director Rebecca Lenkiewicz gets at the central conflict, that the girl (Emma Mackey) is stifled by and loves her mother (Fiona Shaw). But it’s also uninteresting, and I think it’s because film flattens out Sofia, the central character’s perspective. Because the one director who could really, truly do justice to Deborah Levy’s work is David Lynch, and we don’t have him on this physical plane anymore.

Other recent joys: Apparently when you put hard controls on your phone, you read more books? I’ve read several books recently, and the one that stuck with me is Melissa Febos’ The Dry Season. She literally wrote a book about not having sex for three months and reading up on mystic nuns and she made it work and feel profound. Not many writers are working at that level, as far as I can tell!

Because the last episode of Euphoria coincided with a doctor’s visit for me, I had nothing better to do than to watch what was a relatively gripping stand-off drama between Coleman Domingo and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, the former trying to get revenge on the latter for murdering Rue with a fentanyl-laced Percocet. It was a really weird finale for a show that starred Zendaya and was about lost American teenagers going to Euphoria High School! Jules’ role in season 3 was near offensive. Nothing was as funny or sharp as the scene where Sydney Sweeney, as Cassie, ends up saying “I have never EVER been Happier!!!” because she’s secretly dating Nate Jacobs. I’ve been trying to imagine alternate last episodes of sort of affectionately appreciated high school shows that similarly went off to a huh? kind of place. I think the closest analogue for Euphoria may have been Search Party, and what those shows did have in common was likely a process that had been interrupted, again and again, by the pandemic and strikes and in Euphoria’s case, casting a generation of successful actors.

More importantly, you can take a five-year-old to The Sheep Detectives and have a good time, it was a fun cozy mystery (of what is apparently a darker book by a German author). It is one of those movies that works and has clues enough that you can figure it out a little (my daughter noticed clues I didn’t, actually), and it has exquisite, glorious knitwear. A cable-knit sweater in marigold. Molly Gordon spending the last act in one of the Spanish brand Babaa’s famous cardigans, this one in green. When I watched the movie Oh, Hi!, starring and cowritten by Molly Gordon, I ended up with a Coucou Intimates red slip dress. Molly Gordon wearing outfits in movies is simply a danger to my wallet!