Our narrator is trying to write an essay about Gertrude Stein, but it seems impossible. She knows too much and nothing at all about the leading avant-garde thinker of the early 20th century. There are the facts: Gertrude Stein studied psychology at Harvard and medicine at Johns Hopkins, then quit; curated modern art in her rented apartment that would shake the world; wrote novels, plays, poetry and libretti that are incoherent and brilliant; felt love at first sight for her daring wife, the subject of THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS. But so much is out of reach. How do we put ourselves together? What do we lose to become modern? What do we find beyond the limits of language? 

Deborah Levy’s vital literary voice speaks about many things. On footwear: “It has always been very clear to me that people who wear shoes without socks are destined to become my friends and lovers.” On public parks: “A civic garden square gentles the pace of the city that surrounds it, holding a thought before it scrambles.” On Elizabeth Hardwick: “She understands what is at stake in literature.” On the conclusion of a marriage: “It doesn’t take an alien to tell us that when love dies we have to find another way of being alive.” Levy traces and measures her life against the backdrop of different literary imaginations. THE POSITION OF SPOONS is full of wisdom and astonishments and brings us into intimate conversation with one of our most insightful, intellectually curious writers.

At the height of her career, the piano virtuoso Elsa M. Anderson --- former child prodigy who is now in her 30s --- walks off the stage in Vienna, mid-performance. Now she is in Athens, watching an uncannily familiar woman purchase a pair of mechanical dancing horses at a flea market. Elsa wants the horses too, but there are no more for sale. She drifts to the ferry port, on the run from her talent and her history. So begins her journey across Europe, shadowed by the elusive woman who seems to be her double.