Antoinette

I read a sample first chapter of The Cost of Living as it was recommended to me by a friend and I found the writing arresting. The book opens with a short interaction Levy observes between two strangers while on a holiday; an older man tries to casually flirt with a younger woman only to put off by the weight and depth of her response. Levy identifies this woman as the person she writes for, an individual who is willing to push boundaries of convention, someone who seeks more. The book itself covers a period in Levy's life when everything becomes loose; her marriage dissolves and she's forced to uproot herself and her two daughters, her mother passes away, severing the link to her homeland. In the midst of all this chaos, she writes and finds joy in the defragmentation of normal every day life, finding opportunities to gently unsettle boundaries and destabilise some long-standing societal norms.