Concluding the triptych of Levy’s ‘living autobiography,’ Real Estate focuses on the ambiguities associated with the phrase ‘female property’ in characteristically masterful and enlightening prose.
I began to wonder what myself and all unwritten and unseen women would possess in their property portfolios at the end of their lives. Literally, her physical property and possessions, and then everything else she valued, though it might not be valued by society. What might she claim, own, discard and bequeath? Or is she the real estate, owned by patriarchy? In this sense, Real Estate is a tricky business. We rent it and buy it, sell and inherit it - but we must also knock it down.
Three bicycles. Seven ghosts. A crumbling apartment block on the hill. Fame. Tenderness. The statue of Peter Pan. Silk. Melancholy. The banana tree. A Pandemic. A love story.
From one of the great thinkers and writers of our time, comes the highly anticipated final instalment in Deborah Levy's critically acclaimed 'Living Autobiography'.
Following the international critical acclaim of The Cost of Living, this final volume of Deborah Levy's 'Living Autobiography' is an exhilarating, thought-provoking and boldly intimate meditation on home and the spectres that haunt it.
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780241977583
Number of pages: 304
Weight: 213 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 18 mm
A beautifully crafted and thought-provoking snapshot of a life - Evening Standard
One of those wise books where you want to underline every sentence - Good Housekeeping
Her reflections on domesticity, freedom and romance are so beautiful, I found myself underlining multiple sentences a page. Wry, warm and uplifting, it's a book I'll return to again and again. - Stylist
The narrator of Real Estate is drily funny, irreverent, curious, even wise; she makes the reader want her for a companion . . . each of the books [in Levy's living autobiography series] bears several re-readings; together, they offer one version of how a woman might continually rewrite her own story. - The Observer
Levy is experimenting with language in subversive ways - Literary Review
This is a work about what it means to be a writer: its reinventions, isolations, self-interrogations, its shifting penury and riches, both emotional and financial. . . [Levy's living autobiography series is] a glittering triple echo of books that are as much philosophical discourse as a manifesto for living and writing. - Financial Times
Lyrical sentences come naturally, full of cadence . . . She's particularly touching on the love between mothers and daughters, and funny too . . . Real Estate is a book to dive into. Come on in, the water's lovely. - Daily Telegraph
Her voice - at once jokey and elliptical - is so casually intimate that it feels like catching up with an old friend . . . In three moving memoirs, Levy has perfectly fused the act of writing with the art of living. - i
Levy's intellectual energy is as frenetic as [the] dance floor, her memoirs a string of disparate pearls that entwine travelogue with philosophy and memory with literature - i
Expect fierce prose and bold meditations on what it means to be a woman. - Red
Memoirs are not easy books to review but this is not so much a diary, but the writers thoughts on her life. It is beautifully written, part travel journal, part literature and movie review, part essay on motherhood... More
Thanks to Penguin for letting me read Real Estate in advance. I would classify all of Deborah Levy's books as: weird, but I liked it. Of the four I've read, this was my favourite, and that makes me very... More
¨All writing is about seeing new things and investigating them.¨ writes Deborah Levy in her memoir-travelogue, and Real Estate definitely led me along new (and old!) vistas with an original, quirky, deeply interesting... More
Please sign in to write a review
Would you like to proceed to the App store to download the Waterstones App?
