The Position of Spoons

And Other Intimacies

By: Deborah Levy

Narrated by: Alix Dunmore

From twice Booker-shortlisted author Deborah Levy, a feast of observations about everything from the particular beauty of lemons on a table, to the muses that have shaped her life, to the streets of Paris.

In The Position of Spoons, Deborah Levy invites us into the interiors of her world, sharing her most intimate thoughts and experiences, as she traces and measures her life against the backdrop of the literary and artistic muses that have shaped her.

From Marguerite Duras to Colette and Ballard, and from Lee Miller to Francesca Woodman and Paula Rego, we can relish here the richness of their work and, in turn, the richness of the author’s own.

Each moment draws upon Levy’s life in exalting ways, encapsulating the wonderful precision and astonishing depth of her writing, as she seamlessly shifts between and mediates on questions of morality, language, suburbia, gender, consumerism, and the poetics of everyday living. From the child born in South Africa, to her teenage years in Britain, to her travels across the world as a young woman, each moment is a beautiful, tender composition of the questioning self: a portrait of Deborah Levy’s writing life and intellectual vitality in all its dimensions.

©2024 Deborah Levy (P)2024 Hamish Hamilton

Critic reviews

One of:
Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024
Chicago Tribune’s “44 books to read this fall”
The Globe and Mail’s “62 new titles to read this season”

“Writing with lyricism and wit always, Levy takes the reader on a journey through all that has mattered most to her writing and living, the things that make up her heart and mind’s tender fixations, and offers a way for us all to meditate on the small and crucial ways we make sense of the world.” —Literary Hub

“A major contemporary writer who never pulls her punches.” —The Independent

“[Deborah Levy’s] writing is one radiant mise-en-scène after another. . . . dreamy but diamond-sharp, prismatic, droll. . . . Each sentence precisely pins down a feeling. . . . She is straightforward to devastating effect. . . . The Position of Spoons invites the reader into Levy’s literary imagination.” —Los Angeles Review of Books