The Cost of Living
A Working Autobiography
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4.2 • 17 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The bestselling exploration of the dimensions of love, marriage, mourning, and kinship from two-time Booker Prize finalist Deborah Levy.
A New York Times Notable Book
A New York Public Library Best Nonfiction Book of 2018
What does it cost a woman to unsettle old boundaries and collapse the social hierarchies that make her a minor character in a world not arranged to her advantage?
This vibrant memoir, a portrait of contemporary womanhood in flux, is an urgent quest to find an unwritten major female character who can exist more easily in the world. Levy considers what it means to live with meaning, value, and pleasure, to seize the ultimate freedom of writing our own lives, and reflects on the work of such artists and thinkers as Simone de Beauvoir, James Baldwin, Elena Ferrante, Marguerite Duras, David Lynch, and Emily Dickinson.
The Cost of Living, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal in Nonfiction, is crucial testimony, as distinctive, witty, complex, and original as Levy's acclaimed novels.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In this introspective autobiography, celebrated author Deborah Levy explores the very concepts of femininity and gender through the candid lens of her own life’s most defining moments. Through a series of personal essays, Levy vividly recounts her separation from her husband, her life as a writer, her personal reinvention at 50, and her ever-changing relationships with the women in her life. We were captivated by Levy’s insightful observations on the spaces that women are allowed to occupy—both in society and in their interpersonal lives. Levy’s societal and political analysis follows in the footsteps of groundbreaking writers like Simone de Beauvoir, as she bravely defines femininity in her own way. The Cost of Living is a brilliant and compelling look at the true price of womanhood.
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.
