Deborah Levy's New Novel Offers a Partial Portrait of Gertrude Stein

Deborah Levy's latest novel, 'My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein: A Fiction', presents a partial and fictionalized view of the iconic American writer and art collector Gertrude Stein (1874-1946). The book, published by Hamish Hamilton on 16 April, follows an unnamed British writer in Paris tasked with writing an essay on Stein. The narrator reflects on Stein's biography from medical student to Modernist maven, but the narrative often veers into the personal lives of fictional friends, including a financier named Fanny and an illustrator named Eva, whose lost cat is named 'It'. Levy's novel draws parallels between Stein's era and the 21st century, noting that 'Gertrude Stein wanted to kill the nineteenth century. The twenty-first century seems to be killing itself.' The story also highlights lesser-known women of Modernism, such as Alice James and Hortense Fiquet, wife of Paul Cézanne. Stein's influence is contextualized through references to Ernest Hemingway's 'A Moveable Feast' (1964), Woody Allen's film 'Midnight in Paris' (2011), and the London restaurant Toklas, opened in 2021 by Frieze founders. The novel's narrator does not fully unravel the mystery of Stein's enigmatic influence, suggesting that even a year with Stein is insufficient. Rachel Kubrick, an American art journalist based in London, reviewed the book for The Art Newspaper.