…the reality she had bought into might just slaughter her
…I wanted to be in exile from exile
Deborah Levy speaks of her childhood as an adult, her recollections ending with preparing to write Swimming Home, a novel which is perhaps easier to make sense of with these memoirs.
Many of Levy's childhood experiences appear to experiences that led her to knowledge she would have preferred to remain ignorant of.
Hence, the title of her memoirs, I think: Things I Don't Want to Know.
Although, of course, as she finds, she cannot unknow what she does know. The past is always in the present. It is never far behind, and it always catches up with one.