I adore Deborah Levy’s writing and am trying to read all her published fiction and non-fiction books this year. I started my journey with the audiobooks for the first two books in her Living Autobiography and then read an ARC of the third and for now final book in the sequence. First things first: I adored this experience. I rarely manage to read books in any kind of series this close to each other and here it really worked rather well. Levy writes her non-fiction in much the same way she constructs her novels: perfectly structured, looping back and forth, with sentences so sharp they could cut.

Things I Don’t Want to Know (published March 2013)

The first book in the trilogy focusses on Levy as a writer and how her life experiences influence the way she writes and thinks. I thought the second essay, on her childhood in Apartheid South Africa was pitch-perfect. Her prose is excellent and her structure great as always – even if I do not always agree with the more political points Levy makes. She is very much a second-wave feminist and you can tell.

⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.

The Cost of Living (published April 2018)

Impeccably structured, heart-breaking and still somehow optimistic, with prose as sharp as ever. I love Levy’s writing. I liked the essays closer to her life more than the ones that tried to draw on wider societal themes but the ending did nearly make me give this five stars. The impressive way she draws back to what she said before and the way in which she constructed this memoir like one of her fiction novels might still make me change my mind. Near perfect.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Real Estate (published by Hamish Hamilton, May 13th 2021)

Organized around musings on Levy’s dream house and what she would like it to be like, this concluding volume draws onto themes explored in the previous books and works as a conclusion in a way that I found highly, highly satisfying. There are few writers whose prose and narrative structure mean that I will read whatever they put out and will enjoy myself even if I do not always agree with their political points. Levy is this good.

⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.

I loved this. I am kind of wistful having now completed all three and I am somehow hoping against hope that Levy decides to keep writing these sharp, wonderful books. Thankfully Levy has an extensive backlist that I can still jump into, probably in publication order now that I finished all her non-fiction.

Real Estate is the third and final installment in Deborah Levy's 'Living Autobiography' series.

There is something comforting about reading Levy's meditation on real estate, owning a house, and the concept of home during lockdown. Real Estate was written before the pandemic but, after a year where we have largely been confined to within 5km of our homes, I suspect its themes will connect with more people than it might ordinarily have.

As she approaches her sixtieth birthday and her youngest daughter gets ready to leave their flat to attend university, Levy is preoccupied with what her legacy will be. What will she leave behind? Her children and the books she has written, yes. But there won't be a house.

A fellowship in Paris provides the perfect escape from her flat in London and the two sheds she is renting, so that she has a place of her own to write. She knows that her ideal house will remain a pipe dream, but she can still dream - right?

I don't want to say too much about the narrative. So much of the joy is in watching the story unfold. Levy weaves her thoughts on creativity, motherhood, aging, relationships, legacy, and home into a refreshing memoir that is a call to build the life you want.

It can be read as a standalone book but, if you haven't already, I recommended reading Things I Don't Want You Know and The Cost of Living first. If only because you'll get to spend more time in Deborah Levy's world which is time well spent.

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 happy as I was expecting to love The Cost of Living and I found it just ok. But Real Estate did everything I was hoping The Cost of Living would do: it's clever, funny, thought-provoking, atmospheric, and a book that manages to both be very readable and also dense enough to reward you with multiple rereadings (I hope!) This is the third of Deborah Levy's living autobiographies, and this segment is about Deborah Levy's longing for an 'unreal estate', the beautiful and perfect house she has conjured up in her mind, and what her actual 'real estate' is. It made me have lots of thoughts about possible future lives, artistic integrity, the role of women in the domestic sphere... I could go on. I'm making it sound very simplistic and quantifiable, but if you've read anything by Deborah Levy, then you'll know her writing is anything but. 4.5 stars.

I’m obsessed with Levy’s living memoir, and this latest instalment was just as good as I had hoped. I really empathise with her desire for an “unreal estate” of a bigger, fancier, not entirely possible house and land, and how she knows that her capitalistic needs don’t sync up with her life as a writer. Also excellent to read were the little nuggets of inspiration for her most recent novel, The Man Who Saw Everything, which she leads you through. Even better was her recounting of a dream within the memoir, which was just a few pages long but felt like a surreal whizz through some of the (real and images and twisted) events of the book to that point. I can’t recommend Real Estate enough.

This is the third instalment in Levy's Living Autobiography series, where each instalment chronicles her thoughts, struggles, and life-changes, during the small space of time it took to write them.

I felt more distanced from this third book than the previous two but that is merely due to my personal history, as Levy's astounding penmanship and astute observations remained intact. This dealt initially with feelings of displacement and also heavily featured her family. The previous instalments have focused, it felt to me, more on her writing and her internal struggles. These topics were ones I felt I could relate to more, but that does not in any way mean I disliked getting a better understanding of Levy's home life, here.

Levy also continued to construct a series of compelling philosophical arguments and highlighted them alongside a political focus, her personal day-to-day life, and the emotions that go alongside it all. All of these aspects colluded to ensure this another book that transcended the confines of the autobiography genre and also made it another moving and powerful creation.

Levy does it yet again. In this third instalment of her ‘living-autobiography’ series, she has produced a piece of writing that is compelling and rich. She manages to turn the mundanity of life into an utterly absorbing narrative, one that touches on feminism, identity, and other matters which, in the day-to-day lives of many, are so often lost.
Witty, ironic, and painfully relatable, what makes Levy so good is that we can find ourselves in her. She writes with a talent which many do not possess and Real Estate is the finest example of this. Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy.

This is my third read of Deborah Levy, after ‘Hot Milk’ (2016) and ‘The Man Who Saw Everything’ (2019) and the first of her non-fiction work that I happened to read. And as it happens, ‘Real Estate’ is Levy’s third instalment of what she terms as her “living autobiography”, after the previously-published ‘Things I Don’t Want To Know’ (2013) and ‘The Cost of Living’ (2018). I haven’t had the chance to read the first two books of her “living autobiography”, but I would say that I totally like this one. One thing for sure is that I might be biased in my taste regarding Levy’s book since there is this strange sensation that makes me relate to the character of her works that I previously read. And to really get what Levy is trying to say in her “living autobiography”, I’d totally recommend reading at least ‘Hot Milk’ first since it is a really nice introduction to the spell of Deborah Levy.

‘Real Estate’ begins with a quest in search for a home, as age is catching up to Deborah Levy (she was about to reach 60 by the time she began writing this memoir) and the fact that her youngest daughter will soon leave her to study at college, which will leave her alone in her London flat. She was looking for a house, in which she could live and work and make a world at her own pace. As she is an avid swimmer, she also thought that the house should be equipped with a swimming pool, or at least close to the ocean or a lake. Later on, she takes us on random journeys through many places across the globe where she did her activities as a writer spanning from India, Greece, and sometimes returned back to her childhood life in South Africa. The search for a home never stopped for Levy.

And as with every book by Levy, it leads me to pay attention more to questions that keep popping out of my mind throughout my reading experience. If Deborah Levy who has been nominated for Man Booker Prize three times and is considered a prominent writer still questions her place in the universe, this led me to question the meaning of home itself and whether we could really see “real estate” in the same sense of home. To open a house, or any real estate, we will need a key. Levy says in this book: “There is always something secret and mysterious about keys. They are the instrument to enter and exit, open and close, lock and unlock various desirable and undesirable domains.” This simple realization that key holds an important role to get into a real estate ponders over my head, that maybe if we desire to have a home — in the sense that “home” is comparable to a “real estate” — then we will have to ensure that we prepare the key to those people that we’ll let into it.

Levy’s ideas in this book are random, but they are beautiful without any attempts to put cosmetics over it, and I value the honesty in her opinions. For readers who have read ‘The Man Who Saw Everything’, this memoir will also provide some background information of the story, as well as spilling the beans here and there about moments in Deborah Levy’s life that inspires some characters such as Saul Adler’s narcissistic tendency, Jennifer Moreau’s fondness of ylang-ylang perfume, as well as the person who inspires the character of Rainer. Levy recounts briefly the story of how she got a fellowship which required her to stay in Paris for 6 months and finally produced ‘The Man Who Saw Everything’ as the result.

The idea to write a “living autobiography” is quite unique to Levy, as she writes it not at the end of her life in hindsight, but rather amidst the storm of life. Levy is one of the authors whom I adore for her ability to write her traumatic experiences not by ranting about it, but rather in retrospect to look for the silver lining in life. During my current difficult moment, her words have become like a small torch in the darkness. In the end, she concludes: “I own the books that I have written and bequeath the royalties to my daughters. In this sense, my books are my real estate. They are not private property. There are no fierce dogs or security guards at the gate and there no signs forbidding anyone to dive, splash, kiss, fail, feel fury or fear or be tender or tearful, to fall in love with the wrong person, go mad, become famous or play on the grass.” But I have yet to find my real estate.

While slower to get going than Levy’s other autobiographical works, this one gathers pace and by the end I was desperate to keep reading and even more desperate for it never to end. She is an extraordinary writer- humane, profound, prickly, thoughtful and thought provoking, serious and funny. I love her observations about others and about herself both which are considered and insightful. Do read this and ideally start with the earlier ones in the series which I will now reread.

"Real Estate" may as well be my favourite part of Levy's autobiographical trilogy; engaging, sincere, self-deprecating, Levy's voice is empowering and intimate.

¨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 and moving narrative which starts on January 2018 in London. The opening paragraph already takes you seamlessly from a banana tree bought in a stall in East London from a woman with fake, lush eyelashes to the mountains of New Mexico and a severe Georgia O'Keefe painting uncanny sexual flowers that as you look at them intently become "your world for the moment." as GO'K said and DL quotes verbatim making O'Keefe's intention "I want to give that world to someone else." her own. By the end, probably the beginning of 2020 (we are following a lifeline) we will have traveled with Levy to a great variety of places material, immaterial, all real.

I have been fortunate to read an advance copy thanks to Penguin through NetGalley, but I will be buying a hard copy as soon as it hits the bookshops; too many highlighted passages! too many good quotes from other authors. This book is already demanding I read it again. I read it all too quickly!!

I felt real (I will not read this adjective again without thinking of Levy´s extended investigation) intellectual exhilaration reading it as the narrator-author grapples with life, writing, friendship, family, ¨real estate¨, age... but above all, the ideas engendered by all those interactions, crossings, clashes. There is an undercurrent (she is a swimmer) of real humour (ironic, sardonic at times yet also benevolent - as when DL describes an excruciating, misogynistic, red-faced male writer, friendship at large, or the limited range of women characters in film ¨She [a woman] is allowed to be exceptionally skilled at dying."

I totally enjoyed this book which is a wonderful testimony about some aspects of the real (e)state of a (woman) writer's life but goes far beyond the limitations of a mere memoir or even auto-fiction narrative. A great book.

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 once your children no longer need you. This is a woman I would very much like to hang out with sometime, but chances are her memoirs are as good as its going to get.
I love how this book talks about the harsh reality of being a writer in this modern age and how critical acclaim is not automatically a precursor to riches or real estate. Set predominantly in London and Paris with one trip to Berlin and ending up on a Greek Island, but it does include some reminiscences of the South Africa of her childhood.
The overall theme of this book is of her search for imaginary real estate, unreal estate, dream homes and how what she has instead is an empty nest with her beautiful adult children off living their own lives.
It is also interesting to hear her talk about male writers and their attitude towards their female counterparts. Is writing one of the last bastions of sexism? It seems bizarre but I am sure its the truth.
This is a book about how to live as a woman in your 60's, how to live without being defined by a man.
A beautifully written, effortlessly quotable, memoir and about how to be an 60 year-old woman with grace, style and panache.
4.5 Stars
Review to be published on 6 May 2021

I have been eagerly awaiting the third part of Deborah Levy’s ‘living autobiography’ ever since I finished part two (The Cost of Living, now one of my favourite books). I was absolutely thrilled to be approved to review Real Estate (probably the most excited I’ve ever been to receive an approval notification!) and I am delighted to report that it did not disappoint.

In my view, Levy is one of the best writers we have working today. This third memoir focuses loosely on Levy’s preoccupation with leaving the apartment she describes in The Cost of Living, and obtaining her dream house (a room of her own, so to speak). She has an unparalleled ability to distill incredibly insightful ideas into wonderfully accessible sentences that never fail to be a joy to read. I still live in hope that she will give in and present us with a fourth (and a fifth...) installment.

Levy's third living memoir follows her life and thoughts as she sits on the cusp of turning 60. It is a fascinating insight to how Levy's life informs her fiction (in this case 'The man who saw everything') and vice versa. Through her memoirs Levy draws attention to how they feed one into the other (at one point she even interrupts the text with a short story, the threads, symbols and themes preoccupying her in real life placed meticulously at its heart). Also, typical to Levy is her analysis and consideration of other artist's lives and the memoir is peppered with quotes by Georgia O'Keeffe, Audre Lorde, Rebecca West, R.D. Laing, Rilke, Gertrude Stein Katherine Mansfield, to name a few; these quotes are embedded so deeply into the story that they run seamlessly on from Levy's prose.

When the memoir opens we learn that Levy's youngest daughter is soon to leave home to go to university and Levy is invited to carry out research on the doppelganger in Paris. As her children take flight, she becomes evermore preoccupied with her desire to buy and create a legacy for family and friends via a home (hence the title), her vision of a grand old house or 'unreal estate' (with a pomegranate tree, oval fireplace, fountain and wells, circular stairways, light green shutters and mosaic floors) takes shape and details are added as the memoir progresses.

Levy is hilarious and quirky (one of the starring characters in this memoir is a banana tree) and this draws you further into her depth of vision, personal trajectory and day-to-day drama – she is someone/a friend I wish I knew in real life because her insight is so enrichening. The humour accentuates her depth of vision and personal trajectory in understanding the importance of human relations and the imagination. This is also a book about being a woman of all ages coping in patriarchal societies, it is also about travel, and our search for our place and voice in the world.

I have never highlighted so many passages in a book as I have in this memoir and I want to go back and re-read it immediately, as well as re-read her previous two memoirs (and brilliant novels). An important, exceptional and truly beautiful book revealing Levy's smart, brilliant and razor-sharp understanding of the world.

In this third part of Levy's sort-of-autobiography, she continues to seduce readers with her wit, her intelligence, her living politics, her unwavering commitment to feminism, her embracing of life, her writer's vision.

From the banana plant in her bathroom to her layering of what it might mean to possess 'real estate': 'are women real estate owned by patriarchy?' or are dreams of that gorgeous big Mediterranean villa merely a stand in for the ever receding desires that keep us alive and make us human?

With perhaps more humour that the previous book and a peripatetic existence that shifts from London to Paris, Berlin to Greece, Levy proves herself - once again - the ideal companion whose casual erudition (yes, thanks, I do need to read Practicalities, and finally get to The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas) sits comfortably alongside her nights in and out with friends - and yes, I yearned for an invite to her 60th birthday party at that hip Parisian club!

Warm, wise, creative, strikingly non-judgmental, with a self-awareness and sense of self that are enviable, and with a writing style that is elegant as well as intimate and revealing, Levy is one of my icons.

3.5 rounded up

The eagerly anticipated Real Estate, the final installment of Levy's "living autobiography" following the excellent Things I Don't Want to Know and The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography was a largely satisfying conclusion to the series.

This volume focuses on the topic of the title - Levy's fascination with home, property, and her draw to finding what defines "home" for her -- divorced some years ago (the focus of the last book) and with her two daughters soon to fly the nest, she travels domestically and abroad whilst meditating upon the topic, spending time in Paris and India along the way.

Many readers have compared Levy's writing to Rachel Cusk and Ali Smith, so if you're a fan of either (or both!) then I'd highly recommend checking out this book and the wider series.

"Real estate is a tricky business. We rent and buy and sell and inherit it, but we also knock it down".

This is a beautiful memoir from Deborah Levy - it covers a period so short that it reads nearly like a diary, the book divided by location - London, New York, Paris (where the author has won a scholarship to write), a few days in Berlin for a friend's birthday. In each place she reflects on locations and the spaces she inhabits - dreaming of buying a large estate in the countryside, buying trinkets to decorate it and make it her home. She remembers the domesticity of her married life and how trapped she was - a lot of her reflections are about feeling erased, occupying a space where your role is to comfort and care and provide, lletting your own aspirations go. But alone, you end up in a small London flat, or a nearly-empty Parisian appartment. At nearly sixty, what is her legacy? What will she leave behind? Her friend insists she should try and find a partner; and it is a difficult choice to make - you long companionship, but you want to be yourself.

It is hard to describe and categorise this book - despite being a memoir, there is very little happening: birthday gifts for a friend are misplaced, a friend starts an affair, her daughter starts university. But all the moments described feel touching, intimate, personal. Deborah Levy writes about food: the guava ice cream ("smooth, pulpy, fleshy, otherworldly") in India, that she vows to learn to make; the "sea salt on a wedge of sour green tomato", the dhal she used to make for her family, the meals she prepares for her daughers and their group of friends.

More than anything, what I love about Deborah Levy is how closely she observes everything around her and turns the mundane into something magical, how she thinks hard about the little luxuries in the ordinary. She keeps dreaming of something else, something bigger, that large house in the countryside, but she also finds something magical in what she has. She seems content - which is in itself an ordinary feeling, but refreshing in a book written by a single woman in her sixties.

I was astonished to get to read the ARC of my most anticipated book of 2021, so of course I went into this with huge expectations. Deborah Levy is an incredible writer who manages to bring a Virginia Woolf-ian insight into even the most mundane sights. REAL ESTATE is the third and final installment in her Living Autobiography series, after THINGS I DON'T WANT TO KNOW and THE COST OF LIVING and is the most unsettled. Levy searches for her "real estate" in the book, moving between writing sheds, Paris, Greece and London, feeling between lives personally and professionally. I found it endlessly relatable. Not only for her cultural touchstones (she mentions Annie Ernaux, whose book A GIRL'S STORY is my next read) but her feeling of emotional tsuris. Whilst this hasn't quite reached the heights of the rest of her books for me, I have no doubt I will be reflecting on it for a while, and having to write a review the day after finishing seems unfair to her, to me, and to whoever reads this review.

Thanks to Deborah Levy, Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Excellent read! Makes me want to read the entire backlist. And also made me miss travelling the cities and countries mentioned in the book.

I think Real Estate is my favourite part of Levy’s 'Living Autobiography' trilogy. As she approaches her sixtieth birthday, she reflects on her legacy her physical property and possessions - ultimately, what she will be leaving behind one day. Her youngest daughter is moving to University and she finds herself in Paris for a writers’ retreat. This book is sort of a collection of her daily thoughts and musings. I enjoyed when she described what her ‘unreal property’ would look like, and the fact that she never stopped herself from living and trying new things.

I enjoyed this as a follow up to levy's other books on life as an older woman. I enjoyed the descriptions of travel and life in living in other countries and the small pleasures to be had in a simple act like swimming or sitting in the sun.

I enjoyed her fantasies about her perfect house and place feel, her real estate as she calls it. It is not just a house but a place to be herself and write. Something that changes with her experiences.

The book is fluid awash with ideas and feelings. It makes me feel like being older is a good and comfortable thing. I loved her interactions with her daughters so joyful and alive.
Not for fiction lovers but good to let the words wash over you almost poetry like.