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That's All I Know
That's All I Know | Elisa Levi
2 posts | 2 read
Nineteen-year-old Little Lea lives in a rural town where life ends at the edge of the forest. When a stranger loses his dog on the first day after the end of the world, Little Lea warns him not to follow it into the forest, that people who enter never come out. Over a shared joint, she tells him about the burning in her gut, winding a tale of loss, desire, and conspiracies. Little Lea sees the world through backcountry eyes that distrust the outsiders who come but who also get to leave. When she isn't working at her mother's grocery store, she cares for her empty-headed younger sister, Nora, who only cries when she's in pain. Meanwhile, her friend Catalina does nothing but cry. Little Lea wants Javier to love her, and she doesn't want Marco, who leaves weed and his best potatoes on her doorstep. As the town prepares for their end-of-the-world festival, she faces her intensifying desire to leave, that burning that unsettles her life--she wants to be useful somewhere else, even if it means being unloved, unwanted, unable to return. That's all she knows. In a formally ambitious sustained monologue meant to distract the man as the forest does its work, Elisa Levi's That's All I Know explores the toll of caring for those who cannot care for themselves, the fear of the unknown that anchors people to unfulfilling lives, and the bravery it takes to stop deceiving oneself, to give in to longing.
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review
Chelsea.Poole
That's All I Know | Elisa Levi
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Mehso-so

There was a lot going on here and it didn‘t all seem to hang together in a cohesive meaning for me. Or maybe something was lost in translation, or at least in my reading of it. I was most impressed by the main character‘s thoughts about her severely disabled sister‘s inner life and her role of caregiver.

review
Pinta
That's All I Know | Elisa Levi
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Mehso-so

Eerie & poetic, quirky & heartbreaking, first person narrator in a small town at the edge of a forest. Family, home, escape, outsiders, love and loyalty. Something stalls in the narrative, though. Searching narrator, riding in circles, ruminating. A flame in the gut. Lost dogs and cantering animals. The Mayans say it‘s the end of the world. Trans. 2025

56 “Afterward can be anything.”
56 “When you leave this sort of town, there‘s no coming back.”