The Cost of Living

A Guardian Best Book of the 21st Century

The audacious and elegiac second installment in her 'living autobiography' on writing and womanhood, from the twice-Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Hot Milk and Swimming Home

'Extraordinary and beautiful, suffused with wit and razor sharp insights' Financial Times

Following the acclaimed Things I Don't Want to Know, Deborah Levy returns to the subject of her life in letters. The Cost of Living reveals a writer in radical flux, considering what it means to live with value and meaning and pleasure. This perfectly crafted snapshot of a woman in the process of transformation is as distinctive, wide-ranging and original as Levy's acclaimed novels, an essential read for every Deborah Levy fan.

'Wise, subtle and ironic, Levy is a brilliant writer . . . Each sentence is a small masterpiece of clarity and poise' Telegraph

'This short, sensual, embattled memoir is not only about the painful landmarks in her life - the end of a marriage, the death of a mother - it is about what it is to be alive. I can't think of any other writer aside from Virginia Woolf who writes better about what it is to be a woman' Observer