Restless, listless, sleepless and penniless, Sofia Papastergiadis, the heroine of Deborah Levy’s gorgeous new novel, “Hot Milk,” feels about as miserable and alarmed as it is possible to feel. We meet her just after she drops her laptop on the floor, shattering both the screen and the illusion of well-being.

“My laptop has all my life in it,” she says. “If it is broken, so am I.”

At 25, Sofia is a half-English, half-Greek anthropology student who works in a London cafe called the Coffee House but mostly tends to the petulant demands of her mother, Rose. The two have come to Spain seeking a last-ditch cure for the constellation of bizarre and possibly psychosomatic ailments that plague Rose, including, perhaps, an inability to walk.

Sofia has her own ailments, starting with her awful relationship with Rose, but most of them are psychological: disaffection, insecurity, fear, confusion, anxiety, a sense that she is in danger of floating out of herself, Bowie-style, “in the most peculiar way.” The title, “Hot Milk,” evokes the charged connection between mother and child and also sounds a bit like “hot mess,” which many of its characters are.

At its heart, the book is a tale of how Sofia uses strength of will, rigorous self-examination and her anthropological skills to understand and begin to repair things that are holding her back. She learns to stand up for herself, to take risks, even to behave badly. She becomes bolder.