The Cost of Living: A Working AutobiographyThe 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. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 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 |
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 |
A Note on the Author | 135 |
Also Available from Deborah Levy | 137 |
9 Night Wandering | 83 |
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Adriatic Sea Algren anyway apple tree asked balcony Bennet best male friend Big Silver bike bird clock Black Vodka boat Booker Prize bought bubblegum Celia Clara Cost of Living cried currywurst Daisy the Dog dark daughter Deborah Levy Dog of Peace door driver Emily Dickinson Eurostar eyes family house father feel felt female femininity film flat floor flower footsteps freezer funeral garden glass going Goodge Street station hair hand Holloway Road ice lolly inside jacket James Baldwin Jean kitchen knew laptop Levy's lift London looked major character Marguerite Duras medical shoes mother moved Nadia never night novel robot satnav screen shed shouting Simone de Beauvoir sofa someone sound stop story supposed Swimming Home talked tell things thought tiny told Turkish brothers Turkish coffee voice walked walls wearing wife winter woman women words writing yellow