It could be about acceptance, of oneself. And it is the farthest thing from a subtle feminist argument. Disappointments make Sophie look for different routes, ones that slowly seduce us, the readers, to turn the pages, to listen to her thoughts, see her perspectives, and to join her in her journey to lean away from the disappointments towards the potential. In a book full of introspection and subtle analysis of wants and needs, it is remarkable that these heaps of disappointments, and in turn “Hot Milk”, bear no bitterness. At the beginning, most of Sophie’s disappointments are at herself as the pages – and encounters – accumulate, her disappointments become richer those at herself get entwined with those at circumstances and at others. Sophie’s ’emergence’ takes place as she unfolds layers of herself, by airing her shortcomings and grasping new glimmers of potential.

“Hot Milk’s” main character, Sophie, takes us on a journey of two hundred pages to graduate herself from that designation we first meet her as – the daughter – to emerge as a full human being.

The mother, unable to walk, feels being there, even if on a medical trip, even if the Mediterranean for her is a mere view from the terrace of the chalet they rented, is a test – potentially in liberation does she want, is she able, to embrace that liberation, or is it too difficult to abandon one’s comfort zone of anger? On her first day, the daughter, Sophie, rushes to the sea, is stung by shellfish, or the “Medusas” – do the Spanish call them that because their long limbs resemble the Medusa’s hair, or is the sting a metaphor for shocking stares that will stone both, mother and daughter. A mother and a daughter in a town in southern Spain in August.

Mama Does Time by Deborah Sharp