A feast of observations about everything from the particular beauty of lemons on a table, to the allure of Colette, to the streets of Paris, from British poet, playwright, and author Levy.
I could wax enthusiastic about Levy’s writing, which is dreamy but diamond-sharp, prismatic, droll ... Levy does not do complication for complication’s sake. Each sentence precisely pins down a feeling, and with such economy ... Like all of us, Levy is far from coherent or fixed, and if the goal were to emerge from this book with a cohesive portrait of its author—a gestalt exercise unto itself—then the reader would fail. Certainly, this reader did, and happily so ... invites the reader into Levy’s literary imagination, and taken together, these facts and moments form a portrait, but it is far from photographic or even accurate.
The mood here is never too serious ... The collection might be best for the Levy diehards who don’t want to miss any of her writing that happens between longer works ... It’s mainly the purpose of the book that feels askew or absent here.
