In 'The Cost Of Living,' Renouncing Serenity For A Life In Motion
Deborah Levy's brilliant new memoir opens at a time of great change in her life — divorce, deaths, moving house — and it's full of the feeling of travel and movement, but preoccupied with home.
In her first novel, , the English novelist and playwright Deborah Levy described a character becoming "many selves in order to survive. Through observation, study, and meditation she taught herself to change from one self to another, from one state to another." It's an early, tossed-off line, but it predicts Levy's whole body of work. Over and over, this is the story she tells: First a woman learns to change selves, and then she chooses, defiantly, to be the one self she likes best.
