The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy is one of The 100 Best Books of The 21st Century, according to The Guardian, albeit it is ranked just 10368th on The Greatest Books of All Time site; my own verdict is: this is a very good read

 

The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy is one of The 100 Best Books of The 21st Century, according to The Guardian, albeit it is ranked just 10368th on The Greatest Books of All Time site; my own verdict is: this is a very good read

 

 

 

 

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9 out of 10

 

Swimming Home https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/10/swimming-home-by-deborah-levy.html is another great book by Deborah Levy, shortlisted for The Booker Prize – the author has had Hot Milk selected for the same prestigious award -with a very striking, appealing, erotic narrative, a naked girl is there, in the pool, from the start

 

The debut of The Cost of Living is equally intriguing, and captivating: this young woman is alone, at a table in - what was it? Mexico - and a fifty years old man with his hair in a bun invites her to sit with him, where he eats some raw fish marinated in lime juice, the dish comes with a condom, also there is some aphrodisiac or sex name for the meal

Orson Welles https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/08/citizen-kane-written-by-herman.html and many other luminaries are mentioned, quoted, the great director referred to happy endings, and said that it depends on when you end the story, or something to this effect, the first segment continued with the same

 

Young woman talking about her scuba diving one time, and after 20 minutes, she came out of water in a storm, only the boat, with the person who is supposed to help is not there, and we have a metaphor here, about abandonment, except the older guy is not into it…She eats from his dish, but he is the major player in his story, selfish man

Oscar Wilde https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-picture-of-dorian-gray-by-oscar.html has a few lines, something about ‘care for yourself, the others are all taken’, though it must have been different, I have another one though ‘one should always be in love, that is why one should never marry’ Margarite Duras has something about…

 

Mothers being crazy, which makes me think of ‘they fuck you up, your mum and dad’, that comes from Philip Larkin https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/03/a-girl-in-winter-by-philip-larkin-10.html Duras may be the one who was against the use of commas, apparently, Deborah Levy agrees, there is something about the reader placing the stops where he/she wants, or am I mistaken, here? I might well be

Simone de Beauvoir is an admired figure here, we even have the fragment about her coming to Chicago, where she had a lover, the latter wanted the French intellectual to move to the windy city, but de Beauvoir would not, The Second Sex https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/04/le-deuxieme-sexe-aka-second-sex-by.html

 

The replica that is most appealing for the narrator/author in Hamlet https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/05/hamlet-by-william-shakespeare-is-one-of.html is ‘words, words, words’ – another passage that caught my attention was the one on the Eurostar, with the girl who has blue hair, learns French, then this fellow comes with his apple, sandwich, he travels to Paris to get back his wife’s shoes

 

Here is the link to the post you may have some suggestions for:

 

https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/08/do-you-have-any-suggestions-how-to-make.html

 

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