Freedom is never free. Anyone who has struggled to be free knows how much it costs.Even if I thought the first part of Deborah Levy’s ‘Working Autobiography’ trilogy not particularly captivating, these slim volumes in bright blue, yellow and red are so alluringly designed I feel irresistibly drawn to them, even I haven’t read any of Deborah Levy’s novels( yet). Admittedly, just serve me up one part of a trilogy and I compulsively will wolf down the other two. The second part of the trilogy felt

A meditation on marriage, death, and writing, The Cost of Living explores what it means to find a new sense of purpose at midlife. The memoir’s made up of fourteen short personal essays that bring together literary analysis, social criticism, and autobiography. Read in sequence, the essays chart Levy’s attempt to build a new life for herself and her children after she separated from her longtime husband at fifty; as the author vividly recounts her journey, she surveys what writers like Marguerit...

“I did not wish to restore the past. What I needed was an entirely new composition.”Why have I waited so long to read Deborah Levy? This is one of those books, much like several others I have read lately, which will linger and resonate for months to come. I’m not stumbling on these books accidentally, of course. I am quite deliberately choosing writing that will challenge the ideas that are in the very forefront of my mind these days. Levy wrote this at a time in her life that I too find myself

A collection of short, thoughtful pieces from Levy that range from her separation from her husband to a meeting about filming her 'Swimming Home'. Anyone who has read Levy will not be surprised by her attention to the constrictions and constructions of gender ('This is what I resented most, that my mind had been abducted and was full of Him. It was nothing less than an occupation'), but she's also nicely self-conscious about writing, thinking about both material (mothers and daughters) and modes...

Even stronger than the excellent Things I Don't Want to Know, Levy is firing on all cylinders in this short memoir segment, which details a year of change after a divorce, and examines instances of erasure of women in modern society. The scenes are memorable, poignant, and often hilarious (a run over chicken from a grocery store in a road; leaves in her hair during a pitch; birds sipping water on a porch.)"To separate from love is to live a risk-free life. What's the point of that sort of life?

I decided to start this trilogy in the middle, skipping the first volume of Levy’s memoir as an artist, mother and daughter. I guess I was interested to see what she had to say about middle age, that turning point in the life of a person that consolidates the adult you’ve grown to be or breaks the mold of the person you have been made into. Or maybe an unequal combination of both.And what an eye-opening discovery it has been. Honest. Naked. Refreshing.With very direct and flowing style and witho...

I didn't realize this was part of an autobiographical project Deborah Levy had already started (the first being Things I Don't Want to Know) she calls "working autobiography," but after enjoying this one so much, I will definitely go back and read the others, past and future.I can't quote from my copy because it is an advanced readers copy, but that would take forever as I believe I highlighted half of it. It's about reinventing herself at 50, of leaving a marriage that wasn't working, of formin...

Deborah Levy is a woman for our times. She is up to her neck in this moment, stewing like a teabag. One can imagine calming a stressed constituent by sitting her down and handing her a cup…a copy of Levy’s slim new book, a working autobiography, a quiet, private, assessing look at a life which tries to keep the love from leaking out. “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...

I loved this!

There are some writers, if I haven’t read them for a while, I start to get an itch to read them, and it’s all about the voice. I’m not really bothered what the very best writers want to talk about - especially essayists - as it’s just about getting to spend time in that person’s head and share their sensibility.

“All writing is about looking and listening and paying attention to the world,” writes Deborah Levy (and where has she been all my life?) She’s an exquisite writer who crafts her words lyrically and with great insight.Here, in this slim and sensual working autobiography, she becomes her own key character, leaving her marriage of two decades (“To become a person someone else had imagined for us is not freedom—it is to mortgage our life to someone else’s fear) with her two daughters. Vivid scenes

Towards the end of last year I picked up a collection of essays by Deborah Levy, entitled Things I Don't Want to Know. These essays were written as a feminist response to George Orwell's Why I Write, which I was reading at the time. I adored Orwell's writing but there was something about Levy's essay-formed responses that sparked something inside of me. When I saw her next volume of essays were due to be published, shortly after this, I knew I had to read them too, and was instantly sure I was g...

Sometimes freedom comes in strange forms, like claustrophobic little apartments and e-bikes. When you gain freedom, it comes at a cost. Well-known structures that bogged you down are gone, and so is the security you felt in the cage. Deborah Levy reflects on the daring it takes to free yourself from the nets that hold you in place. It is a modern feminist manifesto, defying the patriarchy that guilt-trips people into believing that individual happiness in women is selfish while self-sacrifice is...

Levy is one of my favorite contemporary writers, and with my finishing this, she is now tied with English playwright Mike Bartlett for my 'Most Read Author' (with 13 entries each). This is both a continuation and further development in her 'living autobiography' series, and just as potent, startling and illuminating as part one, 'Things I Don't Want to Know', which mined her early life, whereas this concerns mainly the past three or four years. They are both quick reads, but worth slowing down f...

In the space of a year, Levy separated from her husband and her mother fell ill with the cancer that would kill her. Living with her daughters in a less-than-desirable London flat, she longed for a room of her own. Her octogenarian neighbor, Celia, proffered her garden shed as a writing studio, and that plus an electric bike conferred the intellectual and physical freedom she needed to reinvent her life. That is the bare bones of this sparse volume, the middle one in an autobiographical trilogy,...

Deborah Levy has a unique style of writing which references a disparate range of influences and layers in a lot of symbolism in order to tease out some of the most essential questions about life. I admired the way her novel “Hot Milk” looks at what happens when familial roles are reversed or become more fluid. So it's absolutely fascinating reading “The Cost of Living” which is part of what's been branded Levy's “living autobiography” and follows the time period in which she wrote “Hot Milk”. Sh...

A short but brilliant memoir about life in the aftermath of Levy's divorce - the challenges and opportunities of rebuilding a life at 50. The writing is spectacular - funny, insightful and rich.

I want to learn how to float on my back when swimming. It always looks so serene, so easy, so freeing. I remember being on the beach with a friend in St. Petersburg, Florida. We walked around the "Pink Palace" and then we went by the beach, where I watched her float on her back on a bed of blue. She looked so otherworldly. I say this because in this memoir Deborah Levy remembers her mother "floating on her back, emptying her thoughts, and surrendering to the flow." And one could say this is the

“Freedom is never free. Anyone who has had their freedom knows what it costs”. …A broken down house -after a broken down marriage—…a mother’s death to cancer…the awareness of being fifty…a woman, a writer, and a mother of two daughters…… A new electric bike > (she took out a lot of her rage from her old life on this new bike)….cycling fast… Levy figured the crash of her marriage had already happened so any crash that happened on her bike would be minor in comparison. …much to think about in asso...