The Cost of Living
Living Autobiography 2
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Published:7th Feb '19
£10.99
Available for immediate dispatch.
Dazzling, essential, unlike anything else published today - a memoir on modern womanhood, smashing through social expectations and making the case for thrilling, transformative freedom.
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
Deborah Levy is a most generous writer. What is wonderful about this short, sensual, embattled memoir is that it is not only about the painful landmarks in her life - the end of a marriage , the death of a mother - it is about what it is to be alive. I can't think of any other writer aside from Virginia Woolf who writes better about the liminal, the domestic, the non-event, and what it is to be a woman... This is a little book about a big subject. It is about how to find a new way of living * Observer *
Extraordinary and beautiful, suffused with wit and razor sharp insights * Financial Times *
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... A piece of work that is not so much a memoir as an eloquent manifesto for what Levy calls 'a new way of living' in the post-familial world * Guardian *
Ingenious, practical and dryly amused... This is a manifesto for a risky, radical kind of life, out of your depth but swimming all the same * New Statesman *
Wise, subtle and ironic, Levy is a brilliant writer... Each sentence is a small masterpiece of clarity and poise. That shed should be endowed with a blue plaque
* Telegraph *A heady, absorbing read * Evening Standard *
This, from Deborah Levy, is exceptional. A memoir of life, art and separation. How to write when you're broke, have no writing space, are a parent. Also: crushed chickens, electric bikes, plumbing. Out in May and an early contender for one of the books of the year * Sinead Gleeson *
Both memoir and feminist manifesto, her writing focuses so sharply on what it means to be alive that she's given me much-needed clarity...Levy subtly informs us about what it is to be a woman.
ISBN: 9780241977569
Dimensions: 197mm x 129mm x 13mm
Weight: 148g
208 pages