As the film adaptation of Hot Milk is released, Deborah Levy reflects on novels and films, fiction and non-fiction, stage and screen, and shares her reading, listening and watching recommendations
Swimming Home was recently adapted into a film and Hot Milk will be released soon. Did you ever think ‘this would make a great film’ when you were writing either?
When I’m writing a novel I am totally obsessed with the novel – how to reach my ideas and how it will unfold from start to finish. I am not thinking of film. However, it is true that cinema is one of my main influences. In all my books there are the literary equivalent of close-ups, long shots, jump cuts, aerial views. If I am attentive to the mood of a particular scene in a novel, it’s likely that a film will use lighting and music to create that mood. I have to get there with sentences and paragraphs. When writing a novel, the author is the director and the camera and the lighting designer.
Were there any specific scenes in Hot Milk that you felt were particularly visual or filmic?
The funny thing is that all the scenes I think are particularly visual and filmic mostly don’t make their way into a film. That’s because film, quite rightly, is not going to tell the story in the same way as the novel. It’s not even going to take much dialogue from the novel.
There are exceptions. In Hot Milk, Sofia sees some girl dancers learning the steps for flamenco. The way they stamp their feet echoes some of her own rage. That made its way beautifully into the film. And obviously there are key scenes in the novel that make it to the film. My main point is that the film has its own language, and the novelist has her own language.
How has it felt to watch it transfer from the page to the screen?
It has been an incredible blast to see actors become characters who have lived in my mind and on the page. Fiona Shaw, Vicky Krieps, Emma Mackey are exceptionally skilled actors. They have to make the characters in the novel their own, as did Rebecca Lenkiewicz, who wrote the script and directed the film.
The film adaptation of Hot Milk, with Fiona Shaw as Rose and Emma Mackey as Sofia
© Nikos Nikolopoulos / MUBI / MovieStillsDBIn all my books there are the literary equivalent of close-ups, long shots, jump cuts, aerial views
Both Hot Milk and Swimming Home were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Do you think prize nominations make it more likely that a book will have another life, beyond the page?
Yes, prize nominations definitely draw attention to the book from the film industry, but that doesn’t mean the book will actually make it to film. There are brilliant novels that don’t make brilliant films. I, of course, believe that every novel and every short story I write would make a superb film. I live in hope. What else is there to live in?
You and director Rebecca Lenkiewicz share a background in theatre. Has that fed into the film adaptation in any way? How do the worlds of stage and screen compare?
I don’t think they do compare. Film is a visual form, so the story is going to be told in images, maybe with very little dialogue. What really matters in every form is the complexity of human problems – what do the characters want and what is stopping them from getting it?
Your play 50 Minutes has recently been staged in Switzerland, and you’ve talked about the fear and thrill of sitting in the audience, experiencing their reactions live. Could you describe the relationship you have with your audiences, and the difference between readers and watchers?
Theatre is a collective experience, reading is a solitary experience. A playwright sitting alone in the dark with the audience is very tuned in to when she has lost their attention and keen to know why – or its opposite – the pleasure of witnessing the intense attention of the audience at a particular moment.
So, at the start of the run of a play, I am still deleting lines and maybe tweaking a scene. By the time I have submitted a novel to my publisher, I have done all that work. A writer is also a reader. I am the first reader of all my books and, in a way, I am its most critical audience.
What I most love about reading is that it is solitary: I can be pulled into big emotions and ideas, be devastated or laugh or smile or cry, but most of all I am invited to think and feel without being observed.
The film adaptation of Hot Milk, with Emma Mackey as Sofia and Vicky Krieps as Ingrid
© Nikos Nikolopoulos / MUBI / MovieStillsDBI, of course, believe that every novel and every short story I write would make a superb film. I live in hope. What else is there to live in?
As well as novels and plays, you’re of course also very well known for your living autobiography trilogy. Do you approach writing fiction and non-fiction differently?
I reckon the writing techniques and strategies are the same in fiction and non-fiction. We are really talking about the lift from life into literature in any genre. There is this misunderstanding that non-fiction is not literature, yet the same questions arise in both. It’s not enough to have an interesting story, much more important is how we are going to tell it. So the writer is looking for techniques and strategies in every form.
Does one feel more exposing than the other?
All writing and maybe all art is exposing. Perhaps that is why it will always be more interesting than AI.
What’s your favourite film based on a book?
The film of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark is exceptional. I think this is because of Maggie Smith’s incredible performance as Miss Jean Brodie. She is both charismatic and dangerous. The sly complexity in the novel is really brought out in the film.
Where’s your favourite place to read? And your favourite place to write?
I read everywhere, on trains and planes, on my sofa and on a rock by the sea. I like a calm and private place to write, wherever it is. Many of my books were written in a humble writing shed. I do like looking out at something, not exactly at what is often called ‘a view’, no, something more particular, so maybe a point of view – a roof top, a tree, a road.
What are you reading, watching and listening to right now?
Many exciting audiobooks can be found on Spiracle. The film I recently loved was Jessie Eisenberg’s A Real Pain – the double meaning in the title hints at its complexity and its light touch. I also recommend Minor Detail by Adania Shibil – a meditation on war, violence, erasure and memory. I have also just begun The South by Tash Aw and can’t put it down.
Do you have a favourite book in the Booker Library?
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch. I enjoy the way Murdoch dramatises philosophical ideas and is always onside with the irrational and strange ways in which we think and live our lives. I do think Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus should have won the Booker (whine, moan) but I hope new generations will continue to find this novel and enjoy its uplifting exuberance.
Deborah Levy
© Sheila Burnett
