This was my first Deborah Levy book. I read it in one sitting - with delight. I liked her intelligence, honesty, sense of the absurd, and also the way she made me laugh out loud. It was until I got to the end that I found out that Virginia Woolf had prompted the notion of being 'at war with one's lot'. What a wonderful premise for a book. Now looking forward to 'The Cost of Living', the second in her trilogy. Keen to see how her war turns out. It's a deceptively simple book brimming with wit, wisdom and wonder. ( )

Things Before My Eyes
Review of the Hamish Hamilton hardcover edition (August 21, 2018) of the Notting Hill Editions hardcover original (2013).

I found a biro and had a go at writing down my thoughts. What came out of the biro and on to the page was more or less everything I did not want to know.
...
Writing made me feel wiser than I actually was. Wise and sad. That was what I thought writers should be.
...
I couldn’t work out what I was trying to say. I knew I wanted to be a writer more than anything else in the world, but I was overwhelmed by everything and didn’t know where to start.
...
It occurred to me that where I had to get to was that socket. Even more useful to a writer than a room of her own is an extension lead and a variety of adaptors for Europe, Asia and Africa.

Things I Don't Want to Know (2013) is the 1st book of 3 in author Deborah Levy's (1959 - ) memoirs. It is currently followed by The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography (2018) and Real Estate (2021). She describes them as "Living Autobiographies" as they are "hopefully not being written at the end, with hindsight, but in the storm of life."

This first memoir is set on the island of Majorca where Levy is on retreat and reflecting on her life as a writer before the publication of her novel Swimming Home (2011). She is looking back at her early years in South Africa at a time when her father was imprisoned for actions against the then Apartheid government. The family emigrated to England after his release in 1968.

I don’t want to know about my other memories of South Africa. When I arrived in the UK, what I wanted were new memories.

I enjoyed this memoir immensely as I am always fascinated by "books about books" and why & how people write. I look forward to reading the further installments.

Trivia and Link
Things I Don't Want To Know is written in reaction to George Orwell's Why I Write (1946). ( )

I’m glad to know that I’m not the only woman who does most of her crying on mass transit. ( )

If you like Helen Garner you’ll like this series. Recommend you buy it on Kindle - I bought the paper version of Real Estate and the typography was so bad it was almost unreadable. ( )

Partant de l'essai "Why I write" de George Orwell, Deborah Levy livre à son tour une réflexion au féminin sur ce qui a fait d'elle un écrivain.
Pour cela, elle nous emmène à Majorque mais surtout en Afrique du Sud, où elle est née et où elle a passé une enfance longuement privée de son père, prisonnier politique, qui ne sera libéré que plusieurs années après. Sa libération amènera la famille à émigrer en Angleterre dans les années 70, alors que Deborah Levy est une toute jeune adolescente.
Le prix Fémina étranger a été décerné à ce livre que j'ai toutefois trouvé moins intéressant, moins incisif et pénétrant que le second volet du dyptique (The Cost of Living). ( )