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The High Cost of Living
For Leslie, the cost of living--and loving--is getting higher and higher. She has become involved in a strange erotic triangle with Honor, a romantic young woman, and Bernie, a homosexual street hustler. Both Leslie and Bernie want Honor, but all Honor wants is fun. Here is a powerful novel of three young dreamers caught up in a life-style they can neither accept nor change....
288 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
17 people are currently reading
196 people want to read
About the author
Marge Piercy
108 books931 followersMarge Piercy is an American poet, novelist, and social activist. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers, a sweeping historical novel set during World War II.
Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a family deeply affected by the Great Depression. She was the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan. Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France, and her formal schooling ended with an M.A. from Northwestern University. Her first book of poems, Breaking Camp, was published in 1968.
An indifferent student in her early years, Piercy developed a love of books when she came down with rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood and could do little but read. "It taught me that there's a different world there, that there were all these horizons that were quite different from what I could see," she said in a 1984 interview.
As of 2013, she is author of seventeen volumes of poems, among them The Moon is Always Female (1980, considered a feminist classic) and The Art of Blessing the Day (1999), as well as fifteen novels, one play (The Last White Class, co-authored with her third and current husband Ira Wood), one collection of essays (Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt), one non-fiction book, and one memoir.
Her novels and poetry often focus on feminist or social concerns, although her settings vary. While Body of Glass (published in the US as He, She and It) is a science fiction novel that won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, City of Darkness, City of Light is set during the French Revolution. Other of her novels, such as Summer People and The Longings of Women are set during the modern day. All of her books share a focus on women's lives.
Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) mixes a time travel story with issues of social justice, feminism, and the treatment of the mentally ill. This novel is considered a classic of utopian "speculative" science fiction as well as a feminist classic. William Gibson has credited Woman on the Edge of Time as the birthplace of Cyberpunk. Piercy tells this in an introduction to Body of Glass. Body of Glass (He, She and It) (1991) postulates an environmentally ruined world dominated by sprawling mega-cities and a futuristic version of the Internet, through which Piercy weaves elements of Jewish mysticism and the legend of the Golem, although a key story element is the main character's attempts to regain custody of her young son.
Many of Piercy's novels tell their stories from the viewpoints of multiple characters, often including a first-person voice among numerous third-person narratives. Her World War II historical novel, Gone To Soldiers (1987) follows the lives of nine major characters in the United States, Europe and Asia. The first-person account in Gone To Soldiers is the diary of French teenager Jacqueline Levy-Monot, who is also followed in a third-person account after her capture by the Nazis.
Piercy's poetry tends to be highly personal free verse and often addresses the same concern with feminist and social issues. Her work shows commitment to the dream of social change (what she might call, in Judaic terms, tikkun olam, or the repair of the world), rooted in story, the wheel of the Jewish year, and a range of landscapes and settings.
She lives in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, Massachusetts with her husband, Ira Wood.
(from Wikipedia)
Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a family deeply affected by the Great Depression. She was the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan. Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France, and her formal schooling ended with an M.A. from Northwestern University. Her first book of poems, Breaking Camp, was published in 1968.
An indifferent student in her early years, Piercy developed a love of books when she came down with rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood and could do little but read. "It taught me that there's a different world there, that there were all these horizons that were quite different from what I could see," she said in a 1984 interview.
As of 2013, she is author of seventeen volumes of poems, among them The Moon is Always Female (1980, considered a feminist classic) and The Art of Blessing the Day (1999), as well as fifteen novels, one play (The Last White Class, co-authored with her third and current husband Ira Wood), one collection of essays (Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt), one non-fiction book, and one memoir.
Her novels and poetry often focus on feminist or social concerns, although her settings vary. While Body of Glass (published in the US as He, She and It) is a science fiction novel that won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, City of Darkness, City of Light is set during the French Revolution. Other of her novels, such as Summer People and The Longings of Women are set during the modern day. All of her books share a focus on women's lives.
Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) mixes a time travel story with issues of social justice, feminism, and the treatment of the mentally ill. This novel is considered a classic of utopian "speculative" science fiction as well as a feminist classic. William Gibson has credited Woman on the Edge of Time as the birthplace of Cyberpunk. Piercy tells this in an introduction to Body of Glass. Body of Glass (He, She and It) (1991) postulates an environmentally ruined world dominated by sprawling mega-cities and a futuristic version of the Internet, through which Piercy weaves elements of Jewish mysticism and the legend of the Golem, although a key story element is the main character's attempts to regain custody of her young son.
Many of Piercy's novels tell their stories from the viewpoints of multiple characters, often including a first-person voice among numerous third-person narratives. Her World War II historical novel, Gone To Soldiers (1987) follows the lives of nine major characters in the United States, Europe and Asia. The first-person account in Gone To Soldiers is the diary of French teenager Jacqueline Levy-Monot, who is also followed in a third-person account after her capture by the Nazis.
Piercy's poetry tends to be highly personal free verse and often addresses the same concern with feminist and social issues. Her work shows commitment to the dream of social change (what she might call, in Judaic terms, tikkun olam, or the repair of the world), rooted in story, the wheel of the Jewish year, and a range of landscapes and settings.
She lives in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, Massachusetts with her husband, Ira Wood.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
August 29, 2019
I read ‘The High Cost of Living’ because Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time and City of Darkness, City of Light impressed me so much. This novel is neither historic nor utopian, taking place in rather grim 1970s Detroit. ‘The High Cost of Living’ is told from the point of view of Leslie, a postgraduate student, lesbian, and black belt in karate. The narrative is introspective rather than rife with drama and centres on Leslie’s friendships with Honor and Bernie. The three of them are very different people, but their complicated friendship felt plausible and interesting to me.
I became fond of Leslie, who is obliged to obey the dictates of her PhD supervisor despite resenting his privilege and success. Although set in the 1970s, the gender roles played out in this novel seem depressingly familiar. Academia still remains dominated by straight white men. Moreover, interesting questions of intersectional feminism crop up, both with regard to race and class. Leslie and others are conscious of trying to claw their way up to the middle class through education, resenting those already there all the while. They do not want to become the same people that they resent, but that is the only route out of poverty and model of success that they have. An ambivalent range of perspectives on the merit of academic aptitude are advanced by different characters, which I found intriguing.
Overall, I found this novel thought-provoking and liked the majority of it very much. Nonetheless, some developments in the relationship between Leslie and Bernie made me uncomfortable. The novel asks questions about the differences between intimacy and sex, but in ways that I didn’t really like. That is personal preference, though. My other quibble is related - there is one sex scene in the book which is written in florid and rather bizarre terms. I simply cannot take the phrase, 'hot and passionate as little piglets' remotely seriously. Maybe the reader isn’t supposed to? I think the book deserves four stars, though, because Piercy is such a genuinely interesting writer. Very few books deal so well with issues of friendship, queerness, class, and intersectionality today, let alone in the 1970s. Or maybe I’m wrong, maybe that’s when such books were written and I am falling into the trap of assuming that the current moment is better than the past. That may well not be the case.
I became fond of Leslie, who is obliged to obey the dictates of her PhD supervisor despite resenting his privilege and success. Although set in the 1970s, the gender roles played out in this novel seem depressingly familiar. Academia still remains dominated by straight white men. Moreover, interesting questions of intersectional feminism crop up, both with regard to race and class. Leslie and others are conscious of trying to claw their way up to the middle class through education, resenting those already there all the while. They do not want to become the same people that they resent, but that is the only route out of poverty and model of success that they have. An ambivalent range of perspectives on the merit of academic aptitude are advanced by different characters, which I found intriguing.
Overall, I found this novel thought-provoking and liked the majority of it very much. Nonetheless, some developments in the relationship between Leslie and Bernie made me uncomfortable. The novel asks questions about the differences between intimacy and sex, but in ways that I didn’t really like. That is personal preference, though. My other quibble is related - there is one sex scene in the book which is written in florid and rather bizarre terms. I simply cannot take the phrase, 'hot and passionate as little piglets' remotely seriously. Maybe the reader isn’t supposed to? I think the book deserves four stars, though, because Piercy is such a genuinely interesting writer. Very few books deal so well with issues of friendship, queerness, class, and intersectionality today, let alone in the 1970s. Or maybe I’m wrong, maybe that’s when such books were written and I am falling into the trap of assuming that the current moment is better than the past. That may well not be the case.
January 10, 2020
4.5
This is what I would categories as a feminist and lesbian classic. The story revolves around protagonist Leslie and her internal dialogue on her past relationships, sexuality & position as a woman in the world (this book is set in the 70’s) as well as her interactions with the people around her.
A ‘slice of life’ type book which I love
This is what I would categories as a feminist and lesbian classic. The story revolves around protagonist Leslie and her internal dialogue on her past relationships, sexuality & position as a woman in the world (this book is set in the 70’s) as well as her interactions with the people around her.
A ‘slice of life’ type book which I love
September 26, 2012
I gave up reading this book for the same reason I returned my tickets for the Michigan Womyn's Music Fest.
April 5, 2020
Piercy wrote this just before her more exposed, more committed, more fully circumstanced autobiographical novel of growing up in Detroit and being a college student in Ann Arbor, _Braided Lives_, and it may have encouraged her to that greater generosity and risk-taking. This novel is more pared-down and stylised, almost like a three-hander in the theatre. The characters are the Piercy stand-in, a quantitative history grad. student and karate brown belt, just out of a substantial lesbian relationship; a slum princess, an affected, glassy, partly thwarted sixteen year-old girl, fighting clear of her over-protective mother, and a former gay hustler in his early 20s, a liar and slum-rat--Bernard, a French-Canadian who grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan, eventually parted from his siblings after his mother died of breast cancer and father succumbed to sleepy alcoholism.
Lots of the book is conversations between a 24yo, 20yo and 16-17yo; and it's hard to think they have any moment. Will Honor, the youngest, turn out any different for how Leslie, the point-of-view figure, takes her under her wing? 'I have an insane desire to have ... a motorbike' (!--Leslie gets one at the end of the book, and it is a figure of compromise, bending to dominant masculinity). It seems likely that the novel's informing impulse is guilt, or at least some sort of ambivalence, over how Leslie wants to have sex with Honor, rather than make her the object of a more benign, thought-through queer tutelage. (It also explores the possibility of sex and friendship between lesbians and gay men not soured by heteronormative forms of 'hegemony'--one of the book's recurring words. Though Bernard, an elusively rather than charismatically damaged figure, is gay, this does not mean he is without threat). As it develops, the story becomes a battle between the older, gay figures for Honor's soul--though, in one sense, one neither can win.
This is an interesting novel, well worth reading for any budding Marge Piercy enthusiast. Its view of Detroit and 50s college is closer to dystopian than elsewhere in her writing. It wouldn't be the place for those new to Piercy to start, however.
Lots of the book is conversations between a 24yo, 20yo and 16-17yo; and it's hard to think they have any moment. Will Honor, the youngest, turn out any different for how Leslie, the point-of-view figure, takes her under her wing? 'I have an insane desire to have ... a motorbike' (!--Leslie gets one at the end of the book, and it is a figure of compromise, bending to dominant masculinity). It seems likely that the novel's informing impulse is guilt, or at least some sort of ambivalence, over how Leslie wants to have sex with Honor, rather than make her the object of a more benign, thought-through queer tutelage. (It also explores the possibility of sex and friendship between lesbians and gay men not soured by heteronormative forms of 'hegemony'--one of the book's recurring words. Though Bernard, an elusively rather than charismatically damaged figure, is gay, this does not mean he is without threat). As it develops, the story becomes a battle between the older, gay figures for Honor's soul--though, in one sense, one neither can win.
This is an interesting novel, well worth reading for any budding Marge Piercy enthusiast. Its view of Detroit and 50s college is closer to dystopian than elsewhere in her writing. It wouldn't be the place for those new to Piercy to start, however.
November 10, 2022
I can't think where I acquired this book but it's been sitting on my bookshelf for years, unread! Finally got around to reading it. I loved Marge Piercy's earlier novel Woman on the Edge of Time, and Body of Glass.
This one was rather more ordinary in its subject matter, and somewhat dated, but also kind of cool to read about an independent young lesbian character (Leslie) who was fairly comfortable about her sexuality - in Detroit in the 70s, when feminism and gay and lesbian rights were burgeoning but the society was still pretty conservative overall.
It's kind of a love triangle and then later branches out into more of a dodecahedron. OK, maybe not quite that many sides but nearly. Lesbian, straight, gay, potentially bisexual. It's also about Leslie's internal yearning and at times acute anguish, although outwardly she's a staunch karate kid who gets her black belt, and doggedly pursues her university study.
At times I had to push myself to keep reading this; the interactions and power plays were sometimes awkward and uncomfortable, and some of the characters were annoying and self-indulgent, but about two thirds of the way through the momentum built and then various threads began to pull together.
This one was rather more ordinary in its subject matter, and somewhat dated, but also kind of cool to read about an independent young lesbian character (Leslie) who was fairly comfortable about her sexuality - in Detroit in the 70s, when feminism and gay and lesbian rights were burgeoning but the society was still pretty conservative overall.
It's kind of a love triangle and then later branches out into more of a dodecahedron. OK, maybe not quite that many sides but nearly. Lesbian, straight, gay, potentially bisexual. It's also about Leslie's internal yearning and at times acute anguish, although outwardly she's a staunch karate kid who gets her black belt, and doggedly pursues her university study.
At times I had to push myself to keep reading this; the interactions and power plays were sometimes awkward and uncomfortable, and some of the characters were annoying and self-indulgent, but about two thirds of the way through the momentum built and then various threads began to pull together.
March 19, 2020
Best book title ever! A tale of misfits in high school and just beyond that almost certainly stands up to time. Though the struggles of a gay man and 2 young woman friends may seem extreme, given the advances made in social understanding and acceptance these days. The angst and isolation and the wonder of feeling connected at least to one or two people who care and accept you is perennial for adolescents. The characters leap off the page.
May 8, 2021
Another one that I wasn't sure what to think of at first, but ended up really enjoying. It's very much of its time: set in 1970s Detroit, its protagonist is a 2nd wave feminist, lesbian PhD student who has complicated feelings for 2 people she befriends, a schoolgirl and a young gay man. Not a huge amount in the way of plot, but once it gets going it zips along and really conjure up the place and time well.
June 22, 2022
I would by no means describe this as a "fun" read. I also would not describe any of the characters as "likable". I'm not so sure if Marge was very trusting of gay men.
***SPOILERS***
It was really funny how madly in love* the two older characters were with the younger character, but she didn't really have a personality and was just kind of vapid and hot. And then you get towards the end and she doesn't give two shits about the other two, but was totally digging the attention, and like, the end.
*Wanted to fuck her so bad to prove something
***SPOILERS***
It was really funny how madly in love* the two older characters were with the younger character, but she didn't really have a personality and was just kind of vapid and hot. And then you get towards the end and she doesn't give two shits about the other two, but was totally digging the attention, and like, the end.
*Wanted to fuck her so bad to prove something
November 2, 2022
mmmm...I don't know about this one. I love Marge Piercy so it is hard for me not to like one of her books. The characters had depth and you felt for them and what they were going through but the ending was too abrupt, almost incomplete, for me. It is an early work of hers so, maybe that is all it is. I love her later works.
March 13, 2024
great title and Piercy is obviously a talented writer but I found all the characters unlikeable and impossible to get past the whole 'love story' is about a minor (gross!!!!) I'm sure this was acclaimed in the 70s but it did not stand the test of time for me
March 13, 2020
I've read a number of Piercy's novels and loved them. This one just didn't click for me.
August 23, 2021
First of all big trigger warning about sexual assault, predatory behaviour in this book. It took me by an unpleasant surprise. It was decent, although could have been better I think.
January 10, 2022
Brill romantic romp and no one died!!
September 5, 2025
what the helly
September 8, 2025
it was Fine and boring
February 22, 2014
A re-read, twenty years or more after the first one, is an interesting experience. When I first read this book, I felt that the America in the book was a far away country. The re-read left me feeling that the late twentieth century is even further away. The book has an evocative earnestness to it that takes me back to women's groups, consciousness raising, and the hope we had that we could change the world for the better. I bought this having read and loved 'Woman on the Edge of Time' and 'Vida' and I missed the action of those two books.
This is a book about love and jealousy, and how both can strike from strange directions. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the sexual politics of 1980s America, or anyone puzzling out their own sexual orientation and politics.
This is a book about love and jealousy, and how both can strike from strange directions. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the sexual politics of 1980s America, or anyone puzzling out their own sexual orientation and politics.
August 17, 2008
As usual, Marge Piercy's book was interesting in its analysis of power relationships between men and women, straight and gay, etc. I liked Leslie pretty well, but didn't much care for Honor or Bernard, which didn't help my enjoyment of the story since they were a major part of it.
January 16, 2018
I'm thinking. I'm thinking. I may increase the rating once I ponder and mull this over a bit more. Or I may not. and this has little to do with my great admiration of Piercy overall as in my longstanding opinion she is on the top grade list.
May 27, 2019
The characters seemed unattainably adult to me the first time I read it, twenty years ago. Now, it’s like reading Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For, in that I clearly used it to define what adulthood would mean to me.
April 8, 2017
I really did enjoy this book but god did it have a miserable ending. Haunting. I really struggled to like Bernie's character (particularly in the middle of the text) and Honor reminded me so much of an incredibly naive just-out-of-high-school girl I had a crush on not too long ago. I felt a lot of what Leslie felt towards Honor, which was incredibly bizarre but also kind of legitimizing. I'm glad they didn't end up together, but for George to be the focus of the final page made me feel kind of sick. Mostly because it's so real, even though I'm living in 2017 and this was written in the 70s. Womanhood and queer identities in rough neighborhoods in the toxic masculine world of academia and needing someone to accept to you, even if they are an absolute piece of shit. I hate that I was kind of rooting for Leslie and Bernie toward the end despite their relationship (and him) being fundamentally fucked up. Also, some of Leslie's commentary re: racial politics were kind of confusing. I couldn't tell whether she was truly intersectional and sarcastic, or kind of problematic. I'm guessing it was the former and that I just struggled to read past the written word. The book would be excruciating to read if you didn't have a decent understanding of intersectionality in feminism.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews