The Cost of Living

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.