Catherine Taylor in TLS: ‘Deborah Levy loves to write about water as an element both ruinous and reviving. The action of her novel Swimming Home (2011) takes place around the pool of a rented villa in France; a beach in southern Spain provides the backdrop to the Grand Guignol scenes of Hot Milk (2016).’

And: ‘This is life such as Geoff Dyer wrestled with when he set out to write a biography of D. H. Lawrence and ended up with the unclassifiable triumph Out of Sheer Rage (1997).’

Also: ‘“When she learned to drive she would have one hand on the steering wheel and a roast chicken leg in the other”, Levy writes of her subject.’

The failed biography turned into a minor triumph, by now a genre.

When I learn to drive, I will always carry a roast chicken leg.

I leave the pool for what it is.

(a sf 2109)