Things I Don’t Want to Know On Writing by Deborah Levy While Churchill’s words were broadcast in 193
Things I Don’t Want to Know On Writing by Deborah Levy While Churchill’s words were broadcast in 1939 regarding Russia, I can’t help but apply them to Deborah Levy’s compact, bible-like 2013 treatise on writing. Things I don’t Want to Know is “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” I don’t often pick up nonfiction books by choice, so it was surprising to me when I started to read this morsel standing in West Village’s Three Books & Company and laughed out loud within the first few pages. I couldn’t put it down. I’ve recently read some disparaging remarks on “page-turners.” Some readers have rejected them as cheap or contrived, however, this book is a brilliant example of what a quality page-turner can be. Page-turners keep you reading. That’s it. They keep you curious, engaged; the writer spins the fabric of her story with enough shimmer to keep you smitten and enough substance to keep you satiated. And while it was a small meal at 100 pages, Things I Don’t Want to Know definitely kept me interested til the last course, and I was full at the end. As the piece opens, Levy escapes from wrangling with overwrought emotions on escalators to a rustic writers’ haven in Majorca. Amidst a blizzard there, she dines with a shopkeeper and that’s when we plummet into the rabbit hole of her childhood in apartheid South Africa. Will this book teach you how to write? About 10% of the book actually even mentions writing, and that’s exactly why it’s such a great book on writing. Because writing is about the life lived, the world seen, the experiences had, and not the time spent at the typewriter, with the notebook, bleary-eyed at the blue screen. It touches on gender identity, cultural identity, family, shame, voice, and discovery. It is proof that big things can come in small packages, and that page-turners can deliver substance, insight and life lessons in the hands of a writer brave enough to be emotionally bare, and careful enough to chronicle it in a slim 100-page binding. -- source link
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