An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell

November 3, 2014
Levy, author of the 2012 Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Swimming Home, exists among a rare breed of multi-genre writers as a composer of plays, short stories, and poetry. It's not surprising then that this revised edition of her 1990 work flirts with narrative and gets hot-and-heavy in its dialogue. An angel, "she," descends into a bleak British suburb to save an accountant named Stanleyâ"He"âfrom his boring life. What ensues is a delightful repartée of droll conversations about love, relationships, and the meaning of happiness. Stanley is a logical, content man: "I like the light/ To be just light/ And the dark/ To just be dark/ I do not wish to live in a grey area/ Or to read between the lines." The angel, in contrast, embodies spontaneity, limitlessness: "Die die die of safety," she chides him, unable to rattle him out of his routines. Levy has found a means to capture the human struggle between ambition and satisfaction, settling down and moving on, love and lust, the known and unknown. The angel observes Stanley as "a human subject/ living and furious/ architect of your own paradise/ on this grave earth," but she could be talking about all of us.

November 15, 2014

The author of novels (Man Booker finalist Swimming Home), stories (Black Vodka, short-listed for the BBC International Short Story Award), and plays (some staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company), Levy shows her narrative roots in this dialog between "she," a sort of fallen angel, with "starry tattoos," "All wonderful and winged," and "He," who's "suburbia's satisfied son." She tells him she's there "to rub my skin/ against/ the regularity of your habits," and if her fiery free-spiritedness doesn't entirely shake him, it will delight readers.

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