The Cost of Living

This book is a bible for women in midlife. One of Levy’s ‘living memoirs’, it captures the author’s experience of leaving her marriage at fifty and remaking her life as a writer.

The pose is beautiful: spare and elegant. Importantly, the book explores how it is possible to create a life focused on artistic pursuit, children, and friendship, as opposed to romantic partnership, material wealth, and conservative notions of stability.

I reread it every year to remind myself of what is possible.

This brief and atmospheric account of a year Levy left her marriage and began sorting out how to live a different life is one I return to again and again.

I can’t overstate my affection for the scene in which, traveling through London on her beloved electric bike with groceries in tow, Levy loses a raw whole chicken under the wheels of a passing car. Talk about someone who can turn even life’s most mundane frustrations into a totally transcendent piece of writing.