The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography

by Deborah Levy

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635573534
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	10/15/2019
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	132,698
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Deborah Levy, FRSL, writes fiction, plays, and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, widely broadcast on the BBC, and translated into fourteen languages. The author of highly praised novels, including Hot Milk and Swimming Home (both Man Booker Prize finalists), The Unloved, and Billy and Girl, the story collection Black Vodka, and the essay Things I Don't Want to Know, she lives in London.

Table of Contents

1 The Big Silver 1

2 The Tempest 5

3 Nets 11

4 Living in Yellow 15

5 Gravity 31

6 The Body Electric 41

7 The Black and Bluish Darkness 55

8 The Republic 67

9 Night Wandering 83

10 X Is Where I Am 97

11 Footsteps in the House 107

12 The Beginning of Everything 119

13 The Milky Way 127

14 Good Tidings 131

Editorial Reviews

[Levy] is an indelible writer . . . [an] elliptical genius . . . The Cost of Living . . . is always a pleasure to consume.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“An astute observer of both the mundane and the inexplicable, Levy sketches memorable details in just a few strokes . . . What makes the book stand out . . . is that Levy doesn't allow herself to linger over these details . . . She's like an expert rafter, and the river she travels is full of encounters and emotions. While another writer might give us a lengthy tour of this turbulent water, Levy doesn't slow down. There's joy in her maneuvering through the rapids, difficult though they may be. And there's joy for us in watching her.” —Yiyun Lee, The New York Times Book Review

“Levy's style is fragmented, each anecdote as luminous, self-contained and hard as the pearls in the necklace she habitually wears around her throat. There's humor here and vulnerability . . . The Cost of Living is a smart, slim meditation on womanhood informed by Levy's wide reading.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR's “Fresh Air”

“The Cost of Living is unclassifiable, original, full of unexpected pleasures at every turn. Though it can be read in a flash, I suspect readers will want to savor this book slowly, for its many moments of insight, humor, wisdom, and surprise. Delivered in gorgeous, disciplined prose, Deborah Levy has crafted a bracing, searing inquiry into one woman's life that manages to tell the truth of all women's lives. I loved it.” —Dani Shapiro

“Levy would never tell another woman to live the way she does, or to live any one way at all. She's too sophisticated a feminist for that. Still, she wants us . . . to know that she's happy, that she's thriving in this new, uncharted life. Her work is, too. The last sentence of the book starts, 'The writing you are reading now is made from the cost of living.' For writing this good, the cost of living is plainly the right price to pay.” —NPR.org

“An eloquent manifesto for what Levy calls 'a new way of living' in the post-familial world.” —The Guardian

“This is a writer who has found her voice and her subject, and both speak directly to our times . . . Levy captivates us from her wonderful first sentence . . . If you want evidence that Levy's struggles to find a life that makes sense for her have paid off, this book is Exhibit A.” —The Los Angeles Times

“Extraordinary and beautiful. Ranging widely and deeply over marriage, motherhood, love, death and friendship, it is a work suffused with fierce intelligence, generous humanity and razor-sharp insights.” —The Financial Times

“Powerful.” —O, the Oprah Magazine

“Not only a personal reflection but a meditation on what is demanded of women.” —Electric Literature, “The 15 Best Non-Fiction Books of 2018”

“Spare, lucid, profound, Levy's book is an evaluation of the work of a writer and the work of being a woman in the world.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“She's the most delicious narrator . . . What makes Levy remarkable, beyond the endless pleasures of her sentences, is her resourcefulness and wit. She's ingenious, practical and dryly amused, somehow outside herself enough to find the grim, telling humor in almost any situation. Her experience is interesting to her largely for what it reveals about society, rather than the other way round . . . This is a manifesto for a risky, radical kind of life, out of your depth but swimming all the same.” —The New Statesman

“Keen and moving . . . 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.” —Starred review, Publishers Weekly

“An elegant, candid meditation on the fraught journey to self-knowledge.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A robust piece of writing about what gives humans purpose . . . It is a heady, absorbing read.” —The Evening Standard

“Levy, nearing the end of her fifties, is writing her life not for her peers but for a new generation. Since we tend to speak of feminism as coming in waves, separated by generation gaps (most recently the supposed rift between millennials and baby boomers), we often focus on what divides women. What if instead we saw all women as trying to understand themselves as major characters in a society that will grant them only the status of minor ones?” —Harper's Magazine

“[A] beautiful yet damning indictment of how our culture effaces women's creative voices, both directly and insidiously.” —Library Journal

“A tender, vulnerable book with a fierce strength and intelligence at its core. We sense the courage and honesty Levy required to submerge herself, breath held, fully in the past in order to find her way into a new, altered present.” —Nadja Spiegelman

“Searching for something to read after devouring Women and Power? Known for her piquant novels, Deborah Levy now takes to non-fiction, with a 'working autobiography' that comprises thoughtful dissections of life as a woman.” —Elle Magazine, "Here Are the 21 Books We're Most Excited to Read in 2018"

“In this evocative and insightful memoir, Levy describes her new freedom, in all its complexity and drudgery, and examines how society's expectations can define and confine women . . . Levy deftly relates the circumstances of her new life with a bewitching combination of wit and pathos.” —Booklist

“How thrilling to read this vivid account by a brilliant woman leaving the marital and maternal we for scary freedom in the land of I. I loved this book!” —Honor Moore

“Beautiful, elegiac . . . The power of words to bestow life after death, and the importance of choosing what is living over what is dead, are at the heart of Levy's exquisite prose.” —The Spectator

“An inherently fascinating, thoughtful and thought-provoking read from beginning to end, The Cost of Living is a compelling compilation of intensely personal stories so relevant to our turbulent times.” —Midwest Book Review

“The Cost of Living refers to the price a woman has to pay for unmaking the home she no longer feels at home in. In Levy's case, this radical act of erasure inaugurates a quest for a new life that is inseparable from the writing of a new narrative.” —The Irish Times

““[Levy] packs astounding insight and clarity into every passage . . . If I could, I would buy these books for every woman I know.”” —The Globe and Mail

“A memoir of a woman creating a new life after divorce and a collection of insightful musings on femininity, motherhood, and the craft and discipline of writing.” —Lilith Magazine

“A candid and raw offering from an author whose pain is matched by her exceptional talents as a writer.” —The Free Lance-Star

“Highly evocative and allusive.” —Vulture

From the Publisher

An astute observer of both the mundane and the inexplicable, Levy sketches memorable details in just a few strokes…What makes this book stand out, however, is that Levy doesn't allow herself to linger over these details. There's no stretching every moment to an unnecessarily prolonged beat…Although her emotions are palpable and volatile throughout, Levy's book is about ideas. And its references to her literary predecessors and contemporaries…allow us to contemplate the larger situation in which "a woman has to find a new way of living and breaks from the societal story that has erased her name." But even here Levy doesn't linger. She's like an expert rafter, and the river she travels is full of encounters and emotions. While another writer might give us a lengthy tour of this turbulent water, Levy doesn't slow down. There's joy in her maneuvering through the rapids, difficult though they may be. And there's joy for us in watching her.

The New York Times Book Review - Yiyun Li

…So many minor moments of quotidian grace and wit…filter through The Cost of Living…that it is always a pleasure to consume. [Levy] isn't collecting her thoughts here so much as she is purposefully discollecting them. Calm and order, she suggests, are vastly overrated.

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

★ 02/26/2018
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. (July)

Publishers Weekly

With a poet’s eye and a playwright’s gift for compression, Levy’s observations range from philosophical ponderings to elegant details of the quotidian. Henrietta Meire’s intimate narration gives flesh and blood to Levy’s sketches. Just as her marriage is crumbling, Levy loses her mother. The stress of these developments forces her to reflect on her place in a world in which she is considered only an appendage to her “man,” and she wonders about her mother’s life choices. "If our mother does the things she needs to do in the world, we feel she has abandoned us." Meire navigates the double crises Levy faces in a sure voice, sometimes allowing her vulnerability to shine through, sometimes presenting her as coolly contemplative and completely in charge. A wonderful audiobook. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2018 Best Audiobook © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2018 - AudioFile

2018-04-11
After divorce and her mother's death, a writer struggles to redefine herself.In a memoir notable for its graceful prose, two-time Booker Prize finalist, playwright, and poet Levy (Hot Milk, 2016, etc.) reflects on the new reality of her life after two nearly simultaneous events: the end of her marriage and the loss of her mother. Moving with her daughters into a "large shabby apartment," she was determined to create "an entirely new composition" for all of their lives. "There are only loving and unloving homes," she writes. "It is the patriarchal story that has been broken." The author has much to say about ways that the patriarchal story erases women's identity. For example, she met several men who refer to women only as men's girlfriends or wives. At a party, one man never asked her one question about herself, all the while talking about his own books and his ailing wife. "It seemed," Levy writes, "that what he needed was a devoted, enchanting woman at his side…who understood that he was entirely the subject." That experience was hardly unusual: "It is so mysterious to want to suppress women," she muses. "It is so hard to claim our desires and so much more relaxing to mock them," she adds. Levy wonders about how desire shaped her mother's life and how much her own desires shaped her perception of her mother: "If our mother does the things she needs to do in the world, we feel she has abandoned us." Mothers receive "mixed messages, written in society's most poisoned ink." That poisoned ink infects any woman who dares to break from societal prescriptions. Rebellious women are expected "to be viciously self-hating, crazed with suffering, tearful with remorse." But the author's unexpected freedom from her role as wife liberated something "that had been trapped and stifled," generating renewed energy. Still, she admits, "freedom is never free. Anyone who has struggled to be free knows how much it costs."An elegant, candid meditation on the fraught journey to self-knowledge.

Kirkus Reviews