There are shades of the movie Tár in this insight into the obsessive world of high-flying classical musicians. Like the film, this novel focuses on a musician at the top of her game, but one whose world has begun to disintegrate. And, like the film, the storytelling is baffling, stylish, infuriating and ultimately addictive. Pianist, Elsa is a mesmerising protagonist and her story of doppelgänger-chasing across Europe taps into the unhinged otherness of living through the time of Covid. But Elsa holds back too much from the reader. I wanted to know so much more about her life but she wasn't prepared to share. This is perfectly 'in character' but it makes for an unsatisfying read. Nevertheless, whatever Deborah Levy writes is smart, funny and full of insights. August Blue is no exception.

A famous concert pianist, troubled by a lapse in her ability to perform, and haunted by uncertainty of her origins, spends a confusing summer of sliding doors, and the imminent exit of her mentor and protector from her life. She finds parallels and echos in experiences, and particularly a woman she sees everywhere, who she sees as her nemesis or her double. She has internal conversations with this woman and is aware of her presence wherever she goes. For most of the novel she is in a constant state of nervous movement, shifting from one place to another, creating tension to lead the reader on to the final page.

This new offering from Deborah Levy is frustrating and oblique - but also unputdownable. Written in short sentences, it is an exploration of memory and personal history of a renowned concert pianist who is forced to confront her past and parentage following a disastrous performance. There is a focus on doubling throughout the narrative, which is intriguing. The writing shimmers throughout, leading the reader on through a dreamlike world with an unreliable narrator.

There is a ethereal quality to this book, which could make it difficult to engage with at the start, but persevere and you will become immersed in the world of Elsa, a blue haired virtuoso pianist, who finds herself at a crossroads after a performance disaster. Elsa is not a straightforward protagonist, and some of her thinking is bizarre, but she is engaging and the reader wills her to find herself again, and to begin playing, as this seems to be the key to her sanity. The musical references may be confusing for some, but Deborah Levy has done her homework and most of the book rings true - I say this as a professional classical musician! Read this book to enter into the inventive, fertile world of Elsa’s imagination and relationships, and be prepared to encounter a vulnerable girl trying again to find her place in the world, having thought she know it well.

Elsa M. Anderson is a classical piano virtuoso. In a flea market in Athens, she watches an enigmatic woman buy two mechanical dancing horses. Is it possible that the woman who is so enchanted with the horses is her living double? Is she also looking for reasons to live?

Chasing their doubles across Europe, the two women grapple with their preconceived conceptions of the world and each other, culminating in a final encounter in a fateful summer rainstorm.

A vivid portrait of a long-held identity coming apart, August Blue expands our understanding of the ways in which we seek to find ourselves in others and create ourselves anew. I don’t know what to say about this novel I liked it and I didn’t like it. Elsa the accomplished pianist and her teacher and adopted father Arthur meander through this book with thoughts , quotes and emotions. The opening of the novel Elsa is 34 traveling around Europe seeing friends and teaching the piano to students. A trip to a flea market evokes memories or her mother and childhood mixed with her growing up with Arthur . The author evokes atmosphere, music and feelings along with some wonderful dialogue. Publication date is May 4th you may enjoy this novel of the pianist with blue hair. Thank you @penguinukbooks and @netgalley

Unfortunately, I could not connect with this at all. I have a love-hate relationship with Levy: I loved The Man Who Saw Everything, but I have very lukewarm feelings about her autobiographical series because of her stuck-up Britishness. Nothing really came together and I hated being inside the main character's head, even though I do enjoy an unreliable and unlikeable narrator every now and then if it's done well.

I am a Levy fan, yet this is a bit of a puzzle. I think I can see what the story wants to discuss but the "landscape" of what happens didn't feel convincingly right - there were for me too many "obvious" motifs set in this European artistic (and entitled!) world, which for me were too schematically depicted - no new angles on Paris, Vienna, London, Ipswich or Sardinia, nor on the actual human characters - none of them engaged or surprised me properly.. The virtuoso pianist protagonist, in her 30s, is in crisis after leaving mid-sentence a Rachmaninov concert in Vienna. The crisis is not just artistic - we have glimpses of a great number of other unresolved, unexamined, unknown stress points in the life of Elsa (nee Ann) Anderson not Arturadottir. The doppelgänger so to speak element - an elusive, imagined yet real unknown alter ego but sans blue hair and with hat (Elsa takes her trilby whilst she takes the two mechanical horses she covets), was for me a bit of a red herring even as it resolves itself as the novel progresses. The pandemic is there also as a leitmotif of the pain... and the key that seems to unlock the themes of the novel, and the reason for precisely that Rachmaninov concert, is given at the very end of the novel. i quite agree that mediated pain is bearable whilst witnessing real, individual pain is not. When the expectation is the former but we get the later we are in trouble.
Worth reading and I am thinking that perhaps all the narrative cliches surrounding cities, skies and melodrama characters are there to serve a higher artistic purpose. Three/Four stars. With many thanks to Penguin/Hamish Hamilton via NetGalley

How I loved this. Fiction - yet written in the same tenor as her living memoir volumes. I just adore how beautifully Levy captures the universal in such quirky, niche, layered notes as she crams so much into her carefully selected words.

The novel tells the story of a renowned concert pianist, Elsa who walks out of a performance. This lingers in the background as she stumbles forward attempting to re-group and put herself back together. Whilst she makes outward gestures of change, dyeing her hair blue, this is an almost insignificant aside.

Elsa travels through Europe, off the performance circuit and, as she does so, meets herself coming backwards. Her apparent double (alter ego) pops up in each location, both claiming something the other woman wants. It is intriguing and completely non-tricksy, providing a platform for the novel to keep knocking up against self-examination. At its core it examines the conflicts within us all and our responses and relationships to others. Only Levy could compress so much into so little.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin and Viking UK for the opportunity to read and review

I found it difficult to engage with the main protagonist, partially I think because it is a world so different to mine I cannot imagine it. Does the woman Elsa thinks the woman she sees really exists, is it her twin or the ghost of her mother or her alter ego?

Her adoptive father and former teacher is dying and Elsa goes to him. I did like the way she was challenged for not turning up to visit before now and made me think about how easy it is to become self-centred and self obsessed.

I suspect there is a lot of symbolism here that is lost to me.

I

I am, quite possibly, clear on only one thing about August Blue and that is that I shall have to read it again to thoroughly understand it.

On the face of it we have Elsa, a brilliant concert pianist who, during a concert, stops playing Rachmaninoff and allows the composition that has been swirling in her own head to take over her fingers. Of course the conductor and her teacher, Arthur, see it as a breakdown of sorts. Thankfully whatever criticism she suffers is tempered with the onset of the pandemic and work for all musicians dries up in an instant. Elsa takes it upon herself to teach. Taking a job in Athens she crosses paths with a doppelganger who purchases something Elsa wants. There follows more encounters in Paris and London with Elsa finally heading to Sardinia where her teacher has decamped to find love.

The language is lyrical and draws you in. It is almost a kind of music in itself. Elsa is almost an unknowable character not even being clear on her own origins. Her interactions with other characters are curious as she seems to hold herself aloof from relationships of any kind.

This is my first Deborah Levy and despite its short length it certainly carries a lot of weight in its words. I feel like I've just touched the surface and I've missed so much. I simply feel the need to read it again because I'm curious to see what I've not picked up on.

I will certainly read more Levy whose work intrigues me very much.
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The protagonist is a blue haired pianist who stops performing and spends the next year teaching piano around Europe and running into a mysterious woman.

It is beautifully written with so much imagery. The settings are felt vividly throughout.

To understand it fully and get as much as you can out of this novel, I think it should be read a couple of times. Despite being short it contains a lot and there is so much to unpack.

Like Levys other books the atmosphere is so lucid and at times feels suffocating in the best way. Also like her other novels the atmosphere feels a bit like a European art film - for me this is a great thing but for others if you haven’t enjoyed Levys past novels then this is much of a similar thing.

This is an electric, lyrical book. The passages of description and characterisation sing and it shows you what truly great writing really is. Phenomenal.

“Maybe I am, I said to her. Maybe you are what?”

I love Levy’s previous works, particularly ‘Hot Milk’ and ‘Swimming Home’. I think that her prose is incredibly rich and evocative, and admire the way that she focuses more on creating a heady, enveloping atmosphere for her reader, rather than linear plot and character development. Coming into ‘August Blue’, I was expecting more of the same, and I was not disappointed, although perhaps a trifle underwhelmed.

Elsa, birth name Anne, is a virtuoso concert pianist recovering from a public humiliation when her fingers refuse to play their assigned Rachmaninov. Abashed and eschewing company, Elsa travels to Greece to lick her wounds, there encountering a woman buying some miniature horse statues from a flea market. Convinced that this woman is her double, Elsa fixates on her, wearing her trilby hat (which was left behind at the market) religiously, and seeing her figure constantly as she travels; in Paris, in London. Although this fixation is very much on the surface of the narrative, Levy cleverly explores Elsa’s psyche through her reaction to such sightings, as well as the manner in which she communicates this perceived twin to friends and family.

Whilst I appreciate that Levy’s work eschews traditional plot-driving devices, this novel felt a little too sprawling for me; Elsa herself was difficult for the reader to pin down, and her journeys didn’t feel remotely purposeful. Furthermore, Levy makes the interesting decision to have this novel set during the pandemic, meaning people are often described as wearing masks or maintaining distance from others. Whilst perhaps this was employed as a metaphor for the distance Elsa enforces on others in her life, and from her own emotions, it felt strangely clinical and jarring in what was otherwise a loose, expressionist work.

Not a perfect novel, and not one of my favourites from Levy, but still worth a read for beautiful prose and wonderfully layered motifs.

A great, thought provoking read. I really enjoyed. Thank you to the publisher for the ARC. Lovely cover and title too.

Sadly I didn’t love this book. It’s short and in some ways reminded me of Swimming Home (which I loved) but felt like neither a winter read or a summer read. I didn’t connect with the narrator or any of the characters. I didn’t ‘get’ the obsession with her twin- was she real? Imagined? A metaphor? It missed the spot for me and I found the covid storyline/setting annoying.

‘What is the point of saying ‘love you’ and leaving out the ‘I’?’

August Blue by Deborah Levy is another literary masterpiece. Her prose are lyrical and immerse you in atmosphere and emotion. Travel the world through her writing, try different foods, fall in and out of love and friendships, for better or for worse, feel happiness and pain and anxiety and the rain on your face while you cry. I loved this book and everything that came with reading it.

Thank you to NetGalley for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this story of a pianist without completely understanding what was happening.

On one level this is an easy read - about a concert pianist who takes time out following a disastrous performance and travels, whilst doing some piano teaching and being fascinated by an apparent doppelganger she sees buying some toy horses in a shop.

On another there are clearly allusions to other novels and to the world of classical music, most of which passed me by. This is one case where I will need to read the reviews on publication to help me understand the twists and meanings which go beyond the surface narrative.

I found this book mesmerising. The only other Deborah Levy novel I have read is "Swimming Home", but 'August Blue' easily surpasses it for me. The story is complex and multi-layered, but Levy's writing is so immersive that it never feels heavy and the whole thing can be enjoyed in a single afternoon sitting. Sincere gratitude to Penguin UK (HH) and NetGalley for a no obligation advance review copy.

The heroine is a classical pianist, something of a superstar. But she has stalled, both in career and in life, and has walked off stage mid-performance and not played for an audience since.

She is at a crises in her life and unsure of who she really is. She travels and meets various characters but the most enigmatic is one whom she considers is her double. She believes they communicate, though no words are exchanged.

And her teacher, now 80, is challenging her to read ‘documents’ relating to her adoption by him.

Ultimately, I found this unsatisfying, especially in the conclusion. Although it is well written this did not make up for it being, as other reviewers have said, simply baffling.

I read a copy provided by NetGalley and the publishers.

I greatly enjoyed this short book. The story is simple: a virtuoso concert pianist has some kind of mental breakdown while playing Rachmaninov in Vienna and goes to spend time her adoptive father and teacher who is dying in Sardinia. But there is much more to the book than that: identity, music and place are all important. The characters, their mysteries and their complex relationships are seen through a dreamlike lens. Deborah Levy writes beautifully about colour, food, fabric: every scene is vivid and cinematic, a pleasure to read. Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin for the ARC.