That's All I Know
Lyrical and alarming, Elisa Levi’s fabulistic novella That’s All I Know unveils a small town’s ominous goings-on.
Little Lea lives with her disabled sister and her mother in a minuscule town on the edge of a forest. The residents fear the trees, from which animals may reemerge but people never do. They don’t dare to yearn for the world beyond their home; most end up marrying among themselves. The Mayan calendar interrupts their routines with its suggestion that the world might be coming to an end—a possibility that they handle in stride: “In small places … people need to believe in something just to fill their days.”
On a hot January morning, Lea stops an outsider from chasing his dog into the brush. She begins to tell him about the townspeople’s lives to distract him: about the boy she’s always loved by default, who will not love her back; about her best friend, who has a taste for unrequited love and often cries; about Marco, who leaves signs of his affection and regret on her doorstep. She discusses deep family love and generations of resentment with candor, reflecting on the cruel loss of her father and the seeming inevitability of her future. She wants to leave, but cannot: those who leave can never return.
The novel progresses at a steady, foreboding pace. Lea reveals her desires, local dangers, her concern for the vulnerable, and her dislike of newcomers in turn. She speaks of dead hares just beyond sight—representatives of what she cannot save. In time, the horrors that preceded the stranger’s arrival are revealed—a complicated mix of violence, cruelty, mercy, and love.
A love-hungry girl confesses her innermost truths near the end of the world in the dizzying novella that’s All I Know.
Reviewed by
Michelle Anne Schingler
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