Deborah Levy

The mesmerising new novel from the twice Booker-shortlisted author of Hot Milk and Swimming Home

'If she was my double and I was hers, was it true that she was knowing, I was unknowing, she was sane, I was crazy, she was wise, I was foolish? That summer, the air was electric between us as we transmitted our feelings to each other across three countries.'

Elsa M. Anderson is a classical piano virtuoso. In a flea market in Athens, she watches an enigmatic woman buy two mechanical dancing horses. Is it possible that the woman who is so enchanted with the horses is her living double? Is she also looking for reasons to live?

Chasing their doubles across Europe, the two women grapple with their conceptions of the world and each other, culminating in a final encounter in a fateful summer rainstorm.

A vivid portrait of a long-held identity coming apart, August Blue expands our understanding of the ways in which we seek to find ourselves in others and create ourselves anew.

August Blue

Stas

Yes, well, it's two condratictory thoughts, she said, the possibility of ending my life and wanting more life. So what? And here are two more condradictions: I don't believe in God, but I talk to something like God. I ask this presence to feel for me when I have cut down my own feelings.

Fuck you, whores, he shouted, and then all the usual. We were queers, we were freaks, we were Jews, we were hags, we were ugly, we were mad. The same old composition. Eventually, red in the face, he slammed the door.

I will make love with George Sand to get to get closer to Chopin, she said, sinking her teeth into the millefeuille.

On the way out, her mother asked me if I was happy with her daughter’s progress. 

Yes, I replied, she is very sensible and hard-working.

That night I walked alone on the banks of the Seine. The moon and the stars were bright. I let the stars enter my body and realized I had become porous. Everything that I was had started to unravel. I was living precariously in my own body; that is to say, I had not fallen into who I was, or who I was becoming. What I wanted for myself was a new composition. I had let the woman who bought the horses enter me, too. 

You will agree, Elsa, that most of us don't go through with it, but we have at least walked our minds on this forbidden pasture and let them graze there?

I made a note of the address while she started to talk about all the famous women who had committed suicide by drowning. There are vertical swimmners and horizontal swimmers she said. I myself have sometimes thought I will become a vertical swimmer. No one says I have to do the third act of my life. It is always nasty. If I become ill in old age, I have not ruled it out. 

Of course. No one rules it out. Ask anyone on this boulevard and they will tell you they have considered it. Pills. Rope. Gun. Weed- killer. Water. Jumping off high buldings.

So, Marcus, we'll be finding a mechanic to figure out what's going on with our car, right? 

Steve upped the volume of his voice. As if speaking loudly would somehow wither the flamboyant plastic daisy on his child's shoe.

It seemed that Arthur was going to stay until the end, so she suggested he have a wash and blow-dry himself. The director of the salon, Rafael from Rotherhithe and Rio, as he described himself, was used to being discreet about the effort it took to raise the chair to get Arthur's head to reach the basin. The youngest intern suddenly arrived with three cushions. At last his head was in the basin. 

Perhaps he was talking about my own early attempts at composition. It was as if he knew I could hear something that he did not understand, and resented it. As my fingers found the keys, I discovered that I had a point of view. All I had to do to tear it open was listen.

When I was young, he always sat by my side when I played. Your fingers are asleep, he'd shout, what is the point of teaching a sleeper? At the same time my fingers were lively. Trembling. I didn't know how to be to please him.

I had no desire to scare my own students. 

Sarah Christine Gill

i feel like this when covid is mentioned, ironically enough

Maybe life in our 30s is more fun than in our 20s

I cannot wait to read more of Levy. August Blue is a beautiful example of the contemporary novel done well. The narrative voice was exceptional; both thick and poetic, I felt like Levy was dripping honey into my ear while the saddest music played in the background.

Lily Cooper

Eva Ströberg

Deborah Levy - August Blue
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⭐️
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To be honest, I never read Levy’s work before so I couldn’t tell if this is her style or not, but upon finishing this book, I felt like she had stolen the time I used to read this book from me, and I still don’t get the meaning of it all. Was it just grief about someone close to you passing, was it insecurity abour your own talent? It’s a mixed signal for me that I couldn’t decipher.
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Elsa is a famous pianist who was in Greece for tutoring a rich American (?) teenager. She practically ran away with the tail between her legs after her fiasco in Vienna. While in Athens, she saw a woman very similar to her, purchased two mechanical horses in a shop, and thus began her chase for the doppelgangger to London and Paris. She had also very complicated relationship with her adoptive father, who was also her piano teacher, her maestro.
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I’m not even sure half of the time what is it that I’m supposed to “get” from this book, so it’s a one star from me
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#deborahlevy #augustblue #2023readingchallenge #2023reads #currentlyreading #bookstagram

Rochelle Butcher

August Blue is a story about a prodigy, a concert pianist named Elsa. After a failed concert performance and an encounter with her “double” on the street of Athens, Elsa’s life starts to unravel as she seeks to find answers about her life before she was adopted by her mentor and teacher, Arthur. 

This book is set during the COVID-19 pandemic and is a flashback to earlier times. Themes of acceptance, grief and identity are explored through the narrative. 

This story has many layers to it while initially seeming simple on the surface because of Levy’s tight and concise prose. It is quite a complex novel in terms of figuring out the significance and symbolism of Elsa’s doppelganger or mirrored self. Much literary analysis could be applied here. I’m also still wrapping my head around the ending!

August Blue

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