August Blue is a 2023 novel by Deborah Levy, book of the year according to the Guardian, Independent, and Time magazine. It tells the story of Elsa M. Anderson, a famous concert pianist who, mid-performance in Vienna, walks off stage, leaving behind the debilitating treadmill of what was meant to be a glamorous music career. Through her subsequent wanderings around Europe, she tries to come to terms with the relentless path on which her adoptive father/piano teacher had placed her at a very young age.

While pondering on Elsa’s odyssey, I happened to hear the Gary Jules version of Mad World by Tears for Fears. It struck me that if there were a literary version of Mad World then August Blue would be it. Like the song, the tone of the book is flat and peaceful, a peace that comes from exhaustion, rather than resolution. Any madness is not of the active kind, insufficient energy remaining for that. The atmosphere is one of passiveness and waiting. I found the book – in the words of Mad World – kind of funny and kind of sad. There are allusions to childhood angst, adoption, lack of parental love, ‘children waiting for the day they feel good’.

Does August Blue go anywhere or say anything? Maybe not. Perhaps it’s not interested anymore in getting up bright and early for the daily races. Elsa’s meandering thoughts sometimes focus on her interest in the choreographer Isadora Duncan – who considered a dance not worth dancing if words could explain what the performance was about. Dance is a movement that doesn’t go anywhere in the M25 sense. The same is true of August Blue. The book has the peace of an Antarctic explorer who, giving up on a desire to reach some arbitrary, ice-blasted point on a map, has decided to lie down in the snow. If there is a development through the book, it comes in the slow metamorphosis of Antarctic explorer’s snowy repose, into relaxed beach goer’s sunny repose.

Blue August is a stylish book, beautifully written, atmospheric and affecting. Whether you read to relax, or to think about themes, write essays, or post reviews, this book has something for you.