Name: Things i Don't Want to Know
Rating: 4.12037037037037 (54 reviews)
ISBN: 9781907903632

Deborah Levy

'Perhaps when Orwell described sheer egoism as a necessary quality for a writer, he was not thinking about the sheer egoism of a female writer. Even the most arrogant female writer has to work over time to build an ego that is robust enough to get her through January, never mind all the way to December.' Deborah Levy

A Response to George Orwell's 1946 Essay 'Why I Write'

Things i Don't Want to Know

Sarah Christine Gill

Mara D Alo Fonseca

When she kissed me on my cheek I could feel her heart beating under her coat, fierce and roaring.

Karmen 

If I wasn’t thinking about the past, the past was thinking about me.

A shimmering jewel of a book about writing from two-time Booker Prize finalist Deborah Levy, to publish alongside her new work of nonfiction, The Cost of Living. Blending personal history, gender politics, philosophy, and literary theory into a luminescent treatise on writing, love, and loss, Things I Don't Want to Know is Deborah Levy's witty response to George Orwell's influential essay "Why I Write." Orwell identified four reasons he was driven to hammer at his typewriter--political purpose, historical impulse, sheer egoism, and aesthetic enthusiasm--and Levy's newest work riffs on these same commitments from a female writer's perspective. As she struggles to balance womanhood, motherhood, and her writing career, Levy identifies some of the real-life experiences that have shaped her novels, including her family's emigration from South Africa in the era of apartheid; her teenage years in the UK where she played at being a writer in the company of builders and bus drivers in cheap diners; and her theater-writing days touring Poland in the midst of Eastern Europe's economic crisis, where she observed how a soldier tenderly kissed the women in his life goodbye. Spanning continents (Africa and Europe) and decades (we meet the writer at seven, fifteen, and fifty), Things I Don't Want to Know brings the reader into a writer's heart.

On Writing

Things I Don't Want to Know

Not sure if I'd continue with reading Deborah Levy. Not to say this was a terrible book; just not something I'd remember in the future.

I love how Levy portrays her journey on this one

🪩

kept drawing parallels to my own experiences with privilege that continues to be  juxtaposed against the caste system at all times, like the south african apartheid recalled here. it is a difficult perspective to explain the pain of witnessing from a position that is inside hegemony but without power, and Levy does it with delicacy, wit and warmth. i can't wait to read more.

pranya

'Unmissable. Like chancing upon an oasis, you want to drink it slowly... Subtle, unpredictable, surprising' Guardian Things I Don't Want to Know is the first in Deborah Levy's essential three-part 'Living Autobiography' on writing and womanhood. Taking George Orwell's famous essay, 'Why I Write', as a jumping-off point, Deborah Levy offers her own indispensable reflections of the writing life. With wit, clarity and calm brilliance, she considers how the writer must stake claim to that contested territory as a young woman and shape it to her need. Things I Don't Want to Know is a work of dazzling insight and deep psychological succour, from one of our most vital contemporary writers. 'Superb sharpness and originality of imagination. An inspiring work of writing' Marina Warner

was so captivated by this i got the most viscous sunburn while reading on the beach. deborah levy the woman that u are 😩🤍

i wish i bought the whole series at the same time bc now i’m in rural victoria with no books to read 💔

kayley

was so captivated by this i got the most viscous sunburn while reading on the beach. deborah levy the woman that u are 😩🤍

i wish i bought the whole series at the same time bc now i’m in rural victoria with no books to read 💔

First in a trilogy of memoirs, also the first book I’ve read of Deborah Levy’s. As good a place to start as any, keen for the next 🤗 

Molly Bridge

It was short and she is funny and wise and it had a lot in it in a short amount of time... Very good book! Altho ngl I kinda wish it wasn't a memoir bc I'd like to follow the character of both marias and their lives too...

Nina 

Angbeen Abbas

(3.5/4)

deborah im begging you please hang out with me pleaseeee i need you to be maternal figure to me soooo bad.

Taking George Orwell's famous essay, 'Why I Write', as a jumping-off point, Deborah Levy offers her own indispensable reflections of the writing life. With wit, clarity and calm brilliance, she considers how the writer must stake claim to that contested territory and shape it to her need. Itis a work of dazzling insight and deep psychological succour, from one of our most vital contemporary writers. This first volume of the trilogy focuses on the writer as a young woman - the confusion and turbulence of youth, and the uncertainties of carving an identity as a writer. The second volume, The Cost of Living, speaks to the challenges of middle age as a writer and a woman - motherhood, separation, bereavement.

Jas Wang

Once again, I shall owe my appreciation for this book to the timing. 
Of course, the writing itself is delicately woven as always, but I can see myself (or others) reading this and nit-picking bits, but whilst I picked up the book, it almost felt like it was calling to me, with the answers I seek. And it has definitely shown me my socket, that I just need to reach for.

Clara Jo

A slim first book of Levy's three part living autobiography establishing her writing presence and the quotidian realities of her childhood in apartheid South Africa, particularly those lived experiences that have been catalysts to her becoming a writer. What gives magnitude to our voices, what does it mean to be a woman, what should I do with all the things I don't want to know?— I am compelled to read on in her second book.

Things i Don't Want to Know A Response to George Orwell's 1946 Essay 'Why I Write'

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