Overview

To strip the wallpaper off the fairy tale of The Family House in which the comfort and happiness of men and children has been the priority is to find behind it an unthanked, unloved, neglected, exhausted woman. The Cost of Living explores the subtle erasure of women's names, spaces, and stories in the modern everyday. In this living autobiography infused with warmth and humor, Deborah Levy critiques the roles that society assigns to us and reflects on the politics of breaking with the usual gendered rituals. 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? Levy draws on her own experience of attempting to live with pleasure, value, and meaning--the making of a new kind of family home, the challenges of her mother's death--and those of women she meets in everyday life, from a young female traveler reading in a bar who suppresses her own words while she deflects an older man's advances, to a particularly brilliant student, to a kindly and ruthless octogenarian bookseller who offers the author a place to write at a difficult time in her life. The Cost of Living is urgent, essential reading, a crystalline manifesto for turbulent times.

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9781665135344

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Reviews

The Cost of Living refers to the price a woman has to pay for unmaking the home she no longer feels at home in. -- Irish Times An eloquent manifesto for what Levy calls 'a new way of living' in the post-familial world. -- Guardian (London) Henrietta Meire's intimate narration gives flesh and blood to Levy's sketches...in a sure voice, sometimes allowing her vulnerability to shine through, sometimes presenting her as coolly contemplative and completely in charge. A wonderful audiobook. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award. -- AudioFile Thoughtful dissections of life as a woman. -- Elle [A] beautiful yet damning indictment of how our culture effaces women's creative voices, both directly and insidiously. -- Library Journal

Author Information

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. Henrietta Meire is a full-time voice-over artist and actress. In addition to narrating audiobooks, she has voiced numerous commercial and charity campaigns, as well as video game and animation characters. As an actress, she has appeared on stage, on television, and in a number of popular films.

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