That’s All I Know

A young woman longs for a new life outside of her rural Spanish town in the arresting English-language debut from Levi. Lea, 19, has spent the past year preparing for the apocalypse that her town’s mayor had claimed would arrive by now. It’s New Year’s Day, 2013, and when she meets a man passing through town whose dog has just wandered into the nearby forest, she warns him against entering, claiming that “people who go into the forest never come out.” She proceeds to tell him the story of her life, detailing how she’s helped her mother care for her younger sister, Nora, who can’t speak or move, and recounting their fruit-picker father’s accidental death on the job. When a family arrives from the city in early 2012, Lea gets the itch to leave for bigger things, and near the end of the year, Nora begins acting strangely, trying to bite her tongue off and refusing to eat, prompting Lea to take drastic action. The cruel depictions of “empty-headed” Nora can be tough to stomach, but for the most part Levi’s frank and acerbic prose works to the book’s advantage, highlighting the story’s absurd nature and brutal action. This eerie tale is worth a look. Agent: Elianna Kan, Regal Hoffman & Assoc. (May)