Keynote
A “radically countercultural” (El País Semanal) breakout novel about the restlessness of youth in rural Spain
Book Title
That's All I Know
Subtitle
A Novel
Cover Image
- “Levi's novel is funny and strange, quirky and heartbreaking, voice-driven and philosophical, magical and very real. As Little Lea tells her tale. . . she cast a quiet spell over me. This is a story that reminded me of the bewitching power of storytelling itself.”—Rebekah Bergman
Body
Nineteen-year-old Little Lea lives in a rural town where life ends at the edge of the forest.
When a stranger loses his dog on the first day after the end of the world, Little Lea warns him not to follow it into the forest, that people who enter never come out. Over a shared joint, she tells him about the burning in her gut, winding a tale of loss, desire, and conspiracies.
Little Lea sees the world through backcountry eyes that distrust the outsiders who come but who also get to leave. When she isn’t working at her mother’s grocery store, she cares for her empty-headed younger sister, Nora, who only cries when she’s in pain. Meanwhile, her friend Catalina does nothing but cry. Little Lea wants Javier to love her, and she doesn’t want Marco, who leaves weed and his best potatoes on her doorstep. As the town prepares for their end-of-the-world festival, she faces her intensifying desire to leave, that burning that unsettles her life—she wants to be useful somewhere else, even if it means being unloved, unwanted, unable to return. That’s all she knows.
In a formally ambitious sustained monologue meant to distract the man as the forest does its work, Elisa Levi’s That’s All I Know explores the toll of caring for those who cannot care for themselves, the fear of the unknown that anchors people to unfulfilling lives, and the bravery it takes to stop deceiving oneself, to give in to longing.
When a stranger loses his dog on the first day after the end of the world, Little Lea warns him not to follow it into the forest, that people who enter never come out. Over a shared joint, she tells him about the burning in her gut, winding a tale of loss, desire, and conspiracies.
Little Lea sees the world through backcountry eyes that distrust the outsiders who come but who also get to leave. When she isn’t working at her mother’s grocery store, she cares for her empty-headed younger sister, Nora, who only cries when she’s in pain. Meanwhile, her friend Catalina does nothing but cry. Little Lea wants Javier to love her, and she doesn’t want Marco, who leaves weed and his best potatoes on her doorstep. As the town prepares for their end-of-the-world festival, she faces her intensifying desire to leave, that burning that unsettles her life—she wants to be useful somewhere else, even if it means being unloved, unwanted, unable to return. That’s all she knows.
In a formally ambitious sustained monologue meant to distract the man as the forest does its work, Elisa Levi’s That’s All I Know explores the toll of caring for those who cannot care for themselves, the fear of the unknown that anchors people to unfulfilling lives, and the bravery it takes to stop deceiving oneself, to give in to longing.
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About the Author
Credit: Asi´s Ayerbe
Praise
- “That's All I Know is a trapped story so bare and still the reader can feel Lea's breath swirl as a marble does in a jar. Her desire to leave with her brain—her greatest asset—to free her handicapped older sister, to get laid, and to dance in the fresh air call to mind those characters whose stomachs burn with life.”—Nora Lange
- “For much of That’s All I Know . . . stuckness is the animating force of her life. But by her story’s end . . . her contradictions have produced a stronger engagement with love and with life. That's All I Know is a brilliant feat of authorial control; Elisa Levi has created a devastating delight.”—Maya Binyam
- “Elegant, sly, and enrapturing.”—Catherine Lacey
