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Title: The Cost of Living
Author: Deborah Levy
First published: 2018
Dates read: 6.08. – 08.08.2019
Category: first time read, own book, nonfiction, memoir
Rating: 5/5
The book in five words or less: personal but general

My thoughts:

The Cost of Living is Deborah Levy’s second memoir and eighth or so book in total, but the first of her works I’ve read. Recently divorced, Levy concentrates on what it means to be a woman in the 21st century, and a woman outside a partnership at that. Related to that larger topic, she also reflects on the creative process, motherhood, grief, freedom, and memory. Her interest is in transformation and the courage and will to change it takes to make oneself comfortable in this new, single life. She calls this the cost of living – the bravery to live life to the full and in accordance with one’s personal and creative needs.

I found The Cost of Living an incredibly inspiring and thought-provoking book. It is intensely personal, but also had larger ideas to discuss on the back of Levy’s specific life experiences. The conditions under which creativity can flourish and how they relate to gender and social expectations towards women are something that I’ve been considering myself for a while and thus found them both fascinating and relatable. I also like Levy’s style – it is clear yet profound and beautiful, and her anecdotes and thoughts flow naturally from one to the next.

Overall, a book that I flew through in next to no time and that I will probably end up rereading whenever I need to think about my own place in the world as someone who is both female-presenting and values their own creativity.

 

Read if you like: memoirs by women, thoughts about the creative process, Joan Didion’s Blue Nights (and probably The Year of Magical Thinking), explorations of womanhood, Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own