In contemporary Paris, a narrator and two companions explore the life and work of Gertrude Stein: a subversive imagining of a truly subversive female artist.
A lighthearted, free-associative novel about female friendship and literary inspiration ... If the combination of Levy’s light tone and the bookish details on Stein doesn’t always come together, all the parts of this novel are delightful in themselves: funny, wide-ranging, and worthy of their comma-challenged muse.
Uncategorisable ... Levy is not competing with Stein’s many biographers. She is writing a meditation, not a chronicle or an explanation ... Eva may announce that the essay on Stein will never get written, but here it is – odd, inventive and wonderfully entertaining – triumphantly proving her wrong.
Not simply a portrait of time spent with Stein in a lonely garret. Levy has a gift for populating her work with characters both fictional and historical; her autofiction buzzes with these voices ... Levy, like Stein, is ambiguous. Like Stein, she plays with language and her sentences dazzle – yet their intent is much clearer. She both inhabits and challenges her subject.
