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The Cost of Living
- A Working Autobiography
- Narrated by: Henrietta Meire
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
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The Cost of Living
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Publisher's summary
To strip the wallpaper off the fairy tale of "The Family House" in which the comfort and happiness of men and children has been the priority is to find behind it an unthanked, unloved, neglected, exhausted woman.
The Cost of Living explores the subtle erasure of women's names, spaces, and stories in the modern everyday. In this "living autobiography" infused with warmth and humor, Deborah Levy critiques the roles that society assigns to us and reflects on the politics of breaking with the usual gendered rituals. What does it cost a woman to unsettle old boundaries and collapse the social hierarchies that make her a minor character in a world not arranged to her advantage?
Levy draws on her own experience of attempting to live with pleasure, value, and meaning - the making of a new kind of family home, the challenges of her mother's death - and those of women she meets in everyday life, from a young female traveler reading in a bar who suppresses her own words while she deflects an older man's advances to a particularly brilliant student to a kindly and ruthless octogenarian book seller who offers the author a place to write at a difficult time in her life. The Cost of Living is urgent, essential listening, a crystalline manifesto for turbulent times.
Critic reviews
"Henrietta Meire's intimate narration gives flesh and blood to Levy's sketches.... Meire navigates the double crises Levy faces in a sure voice, sometimes allowing her vulnerability to shine through, sometimes presenting her as coolly contemplative and completely in charge. A wonderful audiobook." (AudioFile)
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Tracy
- 02-02-19
She puts words to feelings I couldn’t describe myself.
In a series of stories about everyday life and her inner thoughts Deborah Levy manages to find the words to explore feelings many of us have but can’t describe as well. I was dumbstruck at many points when a complex experience I’ve had myself and struggled to understand was described so beautifully and succinctly. I found that really healing. She explores the decision to end a marriage, redefining your place as a woman in our society, going through the death of a parent, navigating the world of men you love and dislike at the same time, and raising the next generation of women. I’ll be buying a paper copy to read as well because Deborah’s words needs to be savored longer than the time it takes to hear them.
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By: Deborah Levy, and others
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Hot Milk
- By: Deborah Levy
- Narrated by: Romola Garai
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 136
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 123
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 123
Sofia, a young anthropologist, has spent much of her life trying to solve the mystery of her mother's unexplainable illness. She is frustrated with Rose and her constant complaints, but utterly relieved to be called to abandon her own disappointing fledgling adult life. She and her mother travel to the searing, arid coast of southern Spain to see a famous consultant - their very last chance - in the hope that he might cure her unpredictable limb paralysis. But Dr. Gomez has strange methods that seem to have little to do with physical medicine.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Protagonist's journey of self
- By Saleh on 02-11-17
By: Deborah Levy
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August Blue
- A Novel
- By: Deborah Levy
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 4 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 15
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 14
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Story4 out of 5 stars 14
At the height of her career, the piano virtuoso Elsa M. Anderson—former child prodigy, now in her thirties—walks off the stage in Vienna, mid-performance. Now she is in Athens, watching an uncannily familiar woman purchase a pair of mechanical dancing horses at a flea market. Elsa wants the horses too, but there are no more for sale. She drifts to the ferry port, on the run from her talent and her history. So begins her journey across Europe, shadowed by the elusive woman who seems to be her double.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Charming
- By doris ayres on 07-03-23
By: Deborah Levy
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The Unloved
- By: Deborah Levy
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 6
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 6
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 6
The image is instant. It whirs out of the camera, and they all watch it develop in silence. "Here." He gives the photograph to the perfect, flawless woman without looking at it, by way of apology. When everyone gathers around Luciana to admire it, Gustav clicks again. The unloved look brave. The unloved look heavier than the loved. Their eyes are sadder, but their thoughts are clearer. They are not concerned with pleasing or affirming their loved one's point of view. The unloved look preoccupied.
By: Deborah Levy
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The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 173
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 155
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 156
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
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Luster
- A Novel
- By: Raven Leilani
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,251
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,062
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,063
Edie is stumbling her way through her 20s - sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage - with rules.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Spellbinding
- By Nana on 08-07-20
By: Raven Leilani
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Outline
- The Outline Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Kate Lock
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 29
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 29
A man and a woman are seated next to each other on a plane. They get to talking - about their destination, their careers, their families. Grievances are aired, family tragedies discussed, marriages and divorces analyzed. An intimacy is established as two strangers contrast their own fictions about their lives. Outline is a novel in 10 conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Excruciating
- By Devoted Online Shopper on 03-15-23
By: Rachel Cusk
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Cost of Living
- Essays
- By: Emily Maloney
- Narrated by: Emily Maloney
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 15
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 14
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Story4 out of 5 stars 14
The searing intimacy of Girl, Interrupted combined with the uncomfortable truths of The Empathy Exams in a collection of essays chronicling one woman’s experiences as both patient and caregiver, giving a unique perspective from both sides of the hospital bed.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Honest and Inspiring
- By Josh on 03-19-22
By: Emily Maloney
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A Man's Place
- By: Annie Ernaux, Tanya Leslie
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 2 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 27
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story4 out of 5 stars 25
Barely educated and valued since childhood strictly for his labor, Ernaux's father had grown into a hard, practical man who showed his family little affection. Narrating his slow ascent towards material comfort, Ernaux's cold observation reveals the shame that haunted her father throughout his life. She scrutinizes the importance he attributed to manners and language that came so unnaturally to him as he struggled to provide for his family with a grocery store and cafe in rural France.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Superb
- By E Ray Stewart on 06-04-23
By: Annie Ernaux, and others
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Black Vodka
- Ten Stories
- By: Deborah Levy
- Narrated by: Alison Larkin, Ralph Lister, Alex Bloch, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 10
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 10
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 10
The stories in Black Vodka, by acclaimed author Deborah Levy, are perfectly formed worlds unto themselves, written in elegant yet economical prose. She is a master of the short story, exploring loneliness and belonging; violence and tenderness; the ephemeral and the solid; the grotesque and the beautiful; love and infidelity; and fluid identities national, cultural, and personal.
By: Deborah Levy
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Look at the Lights, My Love
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 1 hr and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 1
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1
For half a century, the French writer Annie Ernaux has transgressed the boundaries of what stories are considered worth telling, what subjects worth exploring. In this probing meditation, Ernaux turns her attention to the phenomenon of the big-box superstore, a ubiquitous feature of modern life that has received scant attention in literature. Recording her visits to a store near Paris for over a year, she captures the world that exists within its massive walls.
By: Annie Ernaux
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Wayward
- A Novel
- By: Dana Spiotta
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 177
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 152
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 155
Samantha Raymond's life has begun to come apart: her mother is ill, her teenage daughter is increasingly remote, and at fifty-two she finds herself staring into "the Mids"—that hour of supreme wakefulness between three and four in the morning in which women of a certain age suddenly find themselves contemplating motherhood, mortality, and, in this case, the state of our unraveling nation.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Pathetic story -- Save your credit
- By Mary D on 07-10-21
By: Dana Spiotta
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Eileen
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,278
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,152
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 1,149
The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father's caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys' prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Strange, unsettling, but engrossing
- By S. Yates on 01-09-18
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
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I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki
- By: Baek Sehee
- Narrated by: Jully Lee
- Length: 3 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 80
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4 out of 5 stars 70
Baek Sehee is a successful young social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing a psychiatrist about her—what to call it?—depression? She feels persistently low, anxious, endlessly self-doubting, but also highly judgemental of others. She hides her feelings well at work and with friends, performing the calmness her lifestyle demands. The effort is exhausting, overwhelming and keeps her from forming deep relationships. This can't be normal. But if she's so hopeless, why can she always summon a yen for her favourite street food: the spicy rice cake, tteokbokki?
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2 out of 5 stars
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Woe is me
- By Adrianna Flores on 07-10-23
By: Baek Sehee
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Vladimir
- A Novel
- By: Julia May Jonas
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 372
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 315
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 312
A provocative, razor-sharp, and timely debut novel about a beloved English professor facing a slew of accusations against her professor husband by former students—a situation that becomes more complicated when she herself develops an obsession of her own.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Please do not judge this book by its cover
- By Sabrina N. Frang on 02-18-22
By: Julia May Jonas
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Thus Was Adonis Murdered
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Caudwell, A.J. Finn
- Narrated by: Lorna Bennett
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 14
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Performance2.5 out of 5 stars 11
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Story4 out of 5 stars 11
Set to have a vacation away from her home life and the tax man, young barrister Julia Larwood takes a trip to Italy with her art-loving boyfriend. But when her personal copy of the current Finance Act is found a few meters away from a dead body, Julia finds herself caught up in a complex fight against the Inland Revenue. Fortunately, she’s able to call on her fellow colleagues who enlist the help of their friend Oxford professor Hilary Tamar. However, all is not what it seems.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Pretty good.
- By K.W. on 07-05-23
By: Sarah Caudwell, and others
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You Could Make This Place Beautiful
- A Memoir
- By: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 170
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 151
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 151
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful, relatable, profound
- By Betty Blue on 04-16-23
By: Maggie Smith
Related to this topic
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The Dark Flood Rises
- A Novel
- By: Dame Margaret Drabble
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 134
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 122
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 123
Francesca Stubbs has a very full life. A highly regarded expert on housing for the elderly who is herself getting on in age, she drives restlessly round England. Amid the professional conferences she attends, she fits in visits to old friends, brings home-cooked dinners to her ex-husband, texts her son, who is grieving over the sudden death of his girlfriend, and drops in on her daughter, a quirky young woman who lives in a floodplain in the West Country.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Life Observed By An Exceptional Writer
- By Sara on 03-22-17
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Putney
- A Novel
- By: Sofka Zinovieff
- Narrated by: Michelle Ford
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 48