Deborah Levy’s ‘My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein’ Reviewed
In her latest novel, Deborah Levy employs a temporally confused, unreliable narrator to explore existential questions across 200 pages of first-person, stream-of-consciousness writing. The narrator travels to Paris to research Gertrude Stein, and the narrative oscillates between the early twentieth century and the autumn of Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection, blurring the two eras to highlight shared violence and totalitarian drives. Levy captures a universal sentiment of helplessness through the narrator’s subjective interpretations of Stein’s life, reflecting anxieties about agency in the present. The novel is published by Hamish Hamilton in hardcover at £18.99, featured in the April & May 2026 issue of ArtReview.
Key facts
- Deborah Levy’s latest novel uses a temporally confused, unreliable narrator.
- The narrator travels to Paris to research Gertrude Stein.
- The narrative shifts between the early twentieth century and autumn 2024.
- The autumn 2024 setting coincides with Donald Trump’s reelection.
- The novel is written in first-person, stream-of-consciousness style.
- Liquid metaphors include Paris’s anticipated centennial flood, a warm bath, and melted Raclette cheese.
- The narrator misnames her date ‘Jean-Luc’ as ‘Jean-Paul’ after writing about Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
- Published by Hamish Hamilton, hardcover £18.99.
- Featured in the April & May 2026 issue of ArtReview.
Entities
Artists
- Deborah Levy
- Gertrude Stein
- Donald Trump
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Simone de Beauvoir
Institutions
- Hamish Hamilton
- ArtReview
Locations
- Paris
- France