The Cost of Living
Living Autobiography 2
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- $119.00
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- $119.00
Publisher Description
A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY
WINNER OF THE PRIX FEMINA ETRANGER 2020
Following on from the critically acclaimed Things I Don't Want to Know, discover the powerful second memoir in Deborah Levy's essential three-part 'Living Autobiography'.
'I can't think of any writer aside from Virginia Woolf who writes better about what it is to be a woman' Observer
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'Life falls apart.
We try to get a grip and hold it together.
And then we realise we don't want to hold it together . . .'
The final instalment in Deborah Levy's critically acclaimed 'Living Autobiography', Real Estate, is available now.
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'I just haven't stopped reading it . . . it talks so beautifully about being a woman' Billie Piper on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs
'It is the story of every woman throughout history who has expended her love and labour on making a home that turns out to serve the needs of everyone except herself. Wonderful' Guardian
'Wise, subtle and ironic, Levy's every sentence is a masterpiece of clarity and poise . . . a brilliant writer' Daily Telegraph
'A graceful and lyrical rumination on the questions, "What is a woman for? What should a woman be?"' Tatler
'Extraordinary and beautiful, suffused with wit and razor-sharp insights' Financial Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This slim, singular memoir by British playwright and poet Levy (Hot Milk) chronicles a brief period following the "shipwreck" of the London writer's 20-year marriage. Levy, a Booker Prize finalist, moved from a large Victorian home to an apartment with her two young adult daughters, accepted an offer from an octogenarian friend of a small shed in which to write, and began to rebuild her life. In the process, she explores the role she has played in the past: that of the nurturing "architect" of family life. Now she hopes to reinvent herself as an independent woman who not only provides for her children, but who enjoys a new physical (e.g., she whizzes about on an electric bike) and creative energy in "the most professionally busy time" in her life. She is occasionally drawn back to her former life; memories make her long for the past (a sprig of rosemary, for example, makes her think of a garden she once planted in the family house), but don't prevent her from moving forward. Levy describes writing as "looking, listening, and paying attention," and she accomplishes these with apparent ease. Her descriptions of the people she meets, the conversations she overhears, and the nuances she perceives in relationships are keen and moving (about a man she has just met, "I objected to my male walking companion never remembering the names of women"). This timely look at how women are viewed (and often dismissed) by society will resonate with many readers, but particularly with those who have felt marginalized or undervalued.
