Hot Milk: A mother + daughter on the cusp of growing — or severing — their relationship

? UNDER THE LAMPLIGHT-

Glaring sun and a complex mother-daughter relationship turns up the heat in Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk. Arriving in a small Spanish village by the sea, Sofia hopes to find treatment for her mother Rose, who has been paralyzed by a mysterious illness, at the clinic of Dr Gomez. As the summer days wear on, Rose’s hypochondria and overbearing dependence on her daughter drives a simmering tension and rage between the two. Sofia, finding herself exploring freedom from her increasingly hysterical and neurotic mother, begins to contemplate how to sever their bond. Hot Milk is laden with infuriating tension between two characters locked into endless immobility around which cicadas sing and the sun burns. Part biting humor, part infuriatingly uncompromising, it portrays the relationship between a mother and daughter on the edge of growth or a steep drop.