Real Estate

'I imagined a house in which I could live and work and think at my own pace, but even in my imagination, this home was blurred, undefined. The odd thing was that every time I tired to see myself inside this imagined house, I felt sad. It was as if the search for home was the point, and now that I had acquired it and the chase was over, there were no more branches to put in the fire. It seemed that acquiring a house was not the same thing as acquiring a home.'

In this final piece of her prize- winning Living Autobiography trilogy, Deborah Levy considers home and the spectres that haunt it: a real and unreal estate which every writer must build for herself, which may be inherited or earned, renovated or razed, and at last passed down to the next generation to make something new.