The Position of Spoons, and Other Intimacies by Deborah Levy review – portrait of the artists

Levy reflects on the creative women who have inspired her, in essays that range from the trivial to the profound

‘It is a writing adventure to go in deep, then deeper, and then to play& with surface so that we become experts at surface and depth,” writes Deborah Levy, and it’s as good& a& statement of intent as any in this collection, which delves into topics both trivial and profound: brothel creepers, car crashes, lemon curd, trauma.

The theme, insofar as there is one, is the artists who have inspired her. Many of these are women, and Levy writes skilfully on the complex interplay of self-presentation and effacement that’s often demanded of female creativity. Lee Miller “both hides from& and gives herself to the camera”; Francesca Woodman makes “herself present by making herself absent”. Artists and writers invent things, but they invent themselves too. The first essay is about Colette, less her& “transgressive and sensuous” writing, and more her author photograph (“I fell in love with her before I read any of her books”). In the image, Colette poses at her desk, chin resting on one hand, glamorous and sly in lipstick. Regarding Violette Leduc’s La Bâtarde, Levy says the autobiography “is probably an attempt& to stage her life and in so doing witness herself as its main performer”.