Advance Praise

"The clue is in the subtitle--'A Fiction'--but, as with all of Deborah Levy's lucid, elegant, wise and often slyly, dryly humorous work, this book is not not about the writer Gertrude Stein . . . Her use of language is precise, honed, entirely her own, delivering quick truths and observations that catch you off the cuff and dazzle."
--Emily LaBarge, The Nerve

"Levy's writing [is] eccentric, intelligent, and capacious."
--Susie Goldsbrough, The Times

"Levy, like Stein, is ambiguous. Like Stein, she plays with language and her sentences dazzle, yet their intent is much clearer. She both inhabits and challenges her subject . . . As a novel, it is as indomitable and earthy as Stein, yet elegant and piercing as only Levy can be."
--Catherine Taylor, The Times Literary Supplement

"The brilliant Deborah Levy returns with a new novel that spills over the boundaries of its genre. On the fictional side is the unnamed narrator, discovering herself in the context of new friends, new experiences and a new country. But rising from this narrative is an exploration of a real life literary legend, as the narrator studies the life and work of the modernist icon Gertrude Stein. The result is a stunning portrait of two time periods and two women, fictional and otherwise, seen through the lenses of each other."
―GQ

"Deborah Levy is that rare thing: an author who has mastered fiction and non-fiction. Here she does each with a fictionalised account of real events in the life of the American writer Gertrude Stein. It sounds impossibly chic."
―The Times

"Run away to Paris with this delightful adventure of friendship that follows narrator Deborah with friends Eva and Fanny as they cook, walk, read and ask who was Gertrude Stein? . . . Truly a delight."
―Elle

"Levy's writing is eccentric, intelligent and capacious."
―Susie Goldsbrough, The Times

"A witty scherzo of a 'fiction' . . . Eva may announce that the essay on Stein will never get written, but here it is--odd, inventive and wonderfully entertaining--triumphantly proving her wrong."
―Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Guardian

"Fans of Deborah Levy won't be disappointed by her latest novel, ostensibly an exploration into the life and work of American avant-garde poet and thinker Gertrude Stein, but at its heart, a story about how we choose to navigate our own lives and anxieties. You don't need to know much, if anything, about Stein to become immediately swept up in the story . . . Levy ruminates on the pleasures and sorrows of friendship and how our own stories evolve."
―Martha Alexander, AnOther Magazine

"A boundary pushing work of which the modernist would be proud . . . It is playful, experimental, formally innovative yet also grounded in a realist approach. It is original . . . A compelling contemporary fiction."
―Robin Styles, The Conversation

"Levy is one of few writers who find fresh ways to astonish with each project. . . [My Year in Paris] promises more of that Levy wizardry: bold structural swings and a freewheeling spirit."
--Lit Hub (Most Anticipated)

"An inventive meld of biography and novel . . . What emerges is a persuasive portrait of Stein--unfettered by corsets, curiously magnetic to men despite her queerness, a self-proclaimed genius who wanted to 'excavate the future' . . . [A] short, witty, intriguing work. A beguiling genre-splicer, strewn with questions and some answers."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"The novel comes alive in the narrator's riveting efforts to grapple with Stein's idiosyncratic life and work. There's much to admire."
--Publishers Weekly