RaveReadings (AU)Unfolds like a dream – surreal, beguiling, enigmatic. As with most of Levy’s work, it creates a singular world ... There is turmoil, but like the oil painting by Henry Scott Tuke that gives this novel its name, there is also calm, the potential for transformation, and rebirth in the deep blue.
Tessa Hadley
RaveReadings (AU)[Hadley\'s] novels have been described as low-key and ‘low-octane’ domestic dramas, and this is at least partly true as a description of Free Love, which is so much more than a story of one woman’s familial discomfort ... The 1960s are happening, but Hadley records them in the intimate spectacle of human relationships within four walls, rarely taking it to the streets. The result is no less transformative ... Hadley doesn’t indulge literary trends; she’s attentive to feelings, to the weight of small actions. Her primary interest is characters – what rumbles in their bellies; what pushes them forward; what glues them in place. Free Love shifts the view between all its major players, with wise, razor-sharp observations. Dialogue resonates with the truth that shadows each word these characters use with each other. When I finished reading Free Love I sensed I knew all these people very well, despite the multitude of lies they tell themselves to get by. They feel alive to me. The highest compliment I can give.
Lauren Groff
RaveReadings (AUS)Scour the formal historical record and you won’t find much about the woman known as Marie de France beyond information that she lived in the 12th century and wrote a series of Breton lais, or short romantic rhymes. But in her latest novel, Lauren Groff generously imagines a complete, alternative life thrashing inside those silences. Matrix is a bold feminist tale of what Marie’s life might have looked, smelled and felt like ... Marie’s legacy, her prideful push for power, is depicted as flawed and more interesting for it ... I loved Groff’s 2015 novel Fates and Furies, but Matrix is a very different creature, and in my opinion, a superior one – a dazzling, primeval story of love, sex, power, community and care. Matrix glows with the fierce fire of sisterhood, like the one Marie’s ‘daughters’ see burning inside her. It’s one of the best novels of the year. Amen.
Deborah Levy
RaveReadings (AUS)Levy writes so well about women who break away to create new narratives and take shape as lead protagonists in their own stories ... more than a memoir; it’s a re-evaluation of what it means to write about the self. Levy’s voice is intimate, formal and always surprising; her style philosophical, funny and incredibly sensual ... Levy’s writing is always full of strong feelings. If Levy’s books are her real estate, she has built herself – and her guests – a rather splendid palace. Getting to know Levy, I also feel like I’m getting to know myself. What a rich gift her living autobiography is.
