Billy & Girl (Dalkey Archive Essentials)

Synopsis

Billy and Girl have been left to raise themselves. Living alone somewhere in England after being abandoned by their parents, they invent elaborate fantasies, search desperately for the mother who never returns, and cling to one another in a relationship that is equal parts love, rivalry, and survival. As childhood blurs into performance and imagination into reality, the siblings create alternative worlds to protect themselves from the pain of their past.

Originally published in 1996, Billy & Girl is one of Deborah Levy's earliest and most inventive novels. By turns darkly funny, unsettling, and deeply compassionate, it explores trauma, memory, identity, and the strange resilience of childhood with the originality and emotional precision that have become Levy's hallmark. A tragic farce that is as playful as it is heartbreaking, it remains one of her most distinctive works.

About the Author

Deborah Levy is a British novelist, playwright, poet, and essayist whose work has earned international acclaim for its formal innovation and psychological depth. She is the author of Swimming Home, Hot Milk, The Man Who Saw Everything, and her celebrated autobiographical Living Autobiography trilogy, including Things I Don't Want to Know and Real Estate. Her novels have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and translated into more than thirty languages. Billy & Girl appears here as part of the Dalkey Archive Essentials series, reintroducing one of Levy's earliest novels to a new generation of readers.

Publisher

Dalkey Archive Press

Publication Date

June 4, 2024

Format

Paperback

Pages

192

Subjects

Literary Fiction · Psychological Fiction · Family · Dark Humour · Modern Classics

ISBN

9781628975031