The Cost of Living Paperback by Deborah Levy

Product Details

• Publisher: Penguin Canada (2026-03-03)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 200 pages
• ISBN-13: 9781037802607
• Item Weight: 164.43 grams
• Dimensions: 20.32 x 13.16 x 1.32 cm

From the twice-Booker-shortlisted author comes a witty and audacious examination of writing and womanhood

"Life falls apart. We try to get a grip. We try to hold it together. And then we realize that we don't want to hold it together."

Crystalline, witty and audacious, The Cost of Living addresses itself to the dual experiences of writing and of womanhood, examining what is essential in each. Following the acclaimed Things I Don't Want to Know, which reflected deeply on the nature of gender politics and a life in letters, The Cost of Living returns to the same subject and to the same life, to find a writer in radical flux. If a woman dismantles her life, expands it and puts it back together in a new shape, how might she describe this new composition? "Words have to open the mind. When words close the mind you can be sure that someone has been reduced to nothingness."

In this elegiac second instalment of her "living autobiography", Deborah Levy considers what it means to live with value and meaning and pleasure. The Cost of Living is a vital and astonishing testimony, as distinctive, wide-ranging and original as Levy's acclaimed novels.

About the Author

DEBORAH LEVY writes fiction, plays, and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, broadcast on the BBC, and widely translated. She is the author of several highly praised novels, including The Man Who Saw Everything (long-listed for the Booker Prize), Hot Milk and Swimming Home (both Man Booker Prize finalists), The Unloved, and Billy and Girl; the acclaimed story collection Black Vodka; and a three-part autobiography, Things I Don’t Want to Know, The Cost of Living, and Real Estate. She lives in London and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.