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Loading... Deborah Levy The Cost of Living (Paperback) /anglais (original 2018; edition 2019)by Levy Deborah (Author)
Work InformationThe Cost of Living by Deborah Levy (2018)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Unique provocative look at a woman's life as wife and mother in modern times. Wonderful writing. I came here after reading[b:Hot Milk|26883528|Hot Milk|Deborah Levy|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1461535043s/26883528.jpg|46932640] , now starting [b:Swimming Home|11700333|Swimming Home|Deborah Levy|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328777389s/11700333.jpg|16647492], I really liked it. ( ) My 2 star rating is because I'm not sure what I think of this sequel to 'Things I Don't Want to Know'. I found the book fairly slight, uneven, lacking in shape - in spine, and without the kind of amused reflection of the preceding book in this autobiography. Maybe there is more to be found in a second reading but I probably won't read it again. I wanted more insight and challenge from a book with such a great title. Nevertheless, I consumed the book with interest and a degree of expectation. What probably killed it for me was the superficiality of last line '...is made from the cost of living and is made with digital ink.' Instead of drawing threads together, this last line seemed like failure of nerve. I expected more from Deborah Levy because she has shown she is capable of more than dull passivity. Perhaps when I've thought more about it... A Room of Her Own Review of the Hamish Hamilton hardcover edition (August 21, 2018) of the Bloomsbury Publishing hardcover original (July 10, 2018), with reference to the Hamish Hamilton Kindle eBook. I had energy because I had no choice but to have energy. I had to write to support my children and I had to do all the heavy lifting. Freedom is never free. Anyone who has struggled to be free knows how much it costs. The Cost of Living carries on with Deborah Levy's memoirs as the follow-up to the 1st volume Things I Don't Want to Know (2013). A further follow-up is the 3rd volume Real Estate (2020), currently the last in the series. Levy describes them as "living autobiographies," as they are "hopefully not being written at the end, with hindsight, but in the storm of life." The current book looks back on a time after Levy's divorce, when she had to support 2 children with her writing. The situation at home was too distracting, so she managed to obtain the use of a friend's garden shed as "a room of her own" in which to write. During this time she also had to deal with the death of her mother. The book continues with her various musings about "why she writes". Most of my favourite quotes are excerpted above in the introduction. As mentioned previously, I especially enjoy books about books and writing, so Levy's memoirs are particularly enjoyable for me. I look forward to completing the current trilogy, but I hope that further memoirs may yet follow. Trivia and Link Deborah Levy's "living autobiographies" are written in reaction to George Orwell's Why I Write (1946). while looking at other reviews of this book i just learned that this book is actually the 2nd in Deborah Levy's autobiographies.. i guess "a working autobiography" should of gave that away, but i didn't think like that, but now i'm excited to read more! i love Deborah Levy and her essays are so beautifully written. they're so personal and reflective and real and just beautiful. her writing style is the best. so much to reflect on in association to moving on and moving forward and letting go of our past lives. i love the metaphor and maybe it was intentional maybe it wasn't or maybe it just turned into a metaphor with her electric bike and how she ended up taking out a lot of rage from her old on this new bike. going forward - keep moving forward. and if she were to crash her bike ever the crash of her marriage was bad enough that any bike crash would be minor in comparison. just a lovely read no reviews | add a review
Belongs to SeriesAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Biography & Autobiography.
Sociology.
Women's Studies.
Nonfiction.
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. No library descriptions found. |
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