The Cost of Living: Book Review

Published July 10, 2018. 

Oh, this book is deceptively powerful.

Deborah Levy is a playwright, poet, novelist and two-times finalist for the Booker Prize. Now she's working on a series of books that autobiographical.

The second installment is The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography.  In her book, she describes her life during the wake of her divorce and the decline of her mother.

During this time, Levy is trying to support herself by her writing. She must juggle being a single mother to teenage girls and living in modest circumstance.

Levy writes about doing her own plumbing repairs in her modest flat and learning to negotiate the city on her motorized bicycle. She also accepts an invitation to write in a garden shed that belongs to an acquaintance.

Amid all these pragmatics, Levy writes about what it means to be a woman in the 21st Century and how she responds to the roles pushed on women, who are often described as "my wife" or "his wife" and not even named.


"Femininity, as a cultural personality, was no longer expressive for me. It was obvious that femininity, as written by men and performed by women, was the exhausted phantom that still haunted the early twenty-first century."

Her nonconformist ways solicit responses from those around her and range from being supportive to being critical. But she doesn't focus much on how others respond to her. The sections on living the life of an artist mainly describes how she puts her head down and works. If she's going to succeed as a published writer, she has to push hard to make this happen. I find her focus and determination inspiring.

On the surface, Levy seems to be chatting with a friend over a cup of tea. However, as her book progressed, I saw themes and recurring images. She displays fine crafting as an author. I admire this more than writing that bashes you over the head with its literary devices.

As a woman in my late fifties, I find her mature voice and her themes about midlife relevant. Even though this book focuses on just two or three years following her divorce, she reaches back to talk about her childhood, she provides a few details about her married life, and she also writes about her mother's life as a way to contextualize the loss Levy is experiencing as her mother is dying.

Levy is tender but tenacious. Even though she's younger than I am, I hope that I can be more like her when I grow up.

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