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Deborah Levy's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Deborah Levy recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Deborah Levy's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

1

My Mother's House & Sido

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette

4.1
In My Mother's House and Sido, Colette plays fictional variations on the themes of childhood, family, and, above all, her mother. Vividly alive, fond of cities, music, theater, and books, Sido devoted herself to her village, Saint-Saveur; to her garden, with its inhabitants and its animals; and, especially, to her children, particularly her youngest, whom she called Minet-Chéri. Unlike Gigi and Ch
Deborah Levy portrait Recommended by Deborah Levy.
To the Lighthouse book cover2

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf, Stella McNichol, Hermione Lee

3.8
For years now the Ramsays have spent every summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on forever; but as the First World War looms, the integrity of family and society will be fatally challenged.
To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionist depiction of a family holiday, and a meditation on a marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny and bit
Deborah Levy portraitHermione Lee portrait Recommended by Deborah Levy and Hermione Lee.
Deborah Levy portrait
Deborah Levy

Aristotle tells us that all politics starts in the family, and you really do see that in To the Lighthouse. Woolf always said that there is no symbolism in the lighthouse at all, and I think we should believe her. All the same, I do think that the lighthouse, in a way, is Mrs Ramsay because the lighthouse is there to protect us from harm and from hazards, and Mrs Ramsay is a self-sacrificing, patient mother who attends to everyone’s needs and tends to protect them from hazards. Of course, that was an impossibility for Woolf, because her mother died when she was 13. So she is really trying to recreate her mother and also her father, Mr Ramsay. She’s brought them to life – I wonder what that must have been like for her to write. In Hot Milk, I refer to To the Lighthouse as well as Woolf’s earlier novel The Voyage Out. It seems to Sofia that her mother is a hazard, and she says, later, ‘I’ve been waiting for her to take the voyage out of her gloom, to buy a ticket to a vital life with an extra ticket for me. I’ve been waiting all my life for her to reserve a seat for me.’ [source]

Hermione Lee portrait
Hermione Lee

When all is said and done, I think it is her greatest novel. [source]

The Lover book cover3

The Lover

Marguerite Duras

3.8
An international best-seller with more than one million copies in print and a winner of France's Prix Goncourt, The Lover has been acclaimed by critics all over the world since its first publication in 1984.

Set in the prewar Indochina of Marguerite Duras's childhood, this is the haunting tale of a tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her Chinese lover. In spare yet luminous pros
Deborah Levy portrait Recommended by Deborah Levy.
As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980 book cover4

As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

Susan Sontag

4.4
This, the second of three volumes of Susan Sontag's journals and notebooks, begins where the first volume left off, in the middle of the 1960s. It traces and documents Sontag's evolution from fledgling participant in the artistic and intellectual world of New York City to world-renowned critic and dominant force in the world of ideas with the publication of the groundbreaking Against Interpretatio
Deborah Levy portrait Recommended by Deborah Levy.
5

All About My Mother

Eloy AzorÃn, Fernando Fernan Gomez, Pedro Almodovar

4.1
Deborah Levy portrait Recommended by Deborah Levy.