The Cost of Living

Name: The Cost of Living
Brand: Penguin Random House NZ
SKU: 9781405988766
Price: 32.99 NZD
Availability: InStock

By Kathleen Farrell

Series: The Mermaid Collection

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Brief Description

Format: Paperback / softback

$32⁹⁹

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The Cost of Living

$32⁹⁹

Description

Discover your new favourite forgotten female classics with the Mermaid collection - No 6- Kathleen Farrell's The Cost of Living with a foreword by Jane Fallon Idealistic Alexandra is throwing a party to meet a more glamorous crowd. Marianne, more sardonic, worries it'll be the usual sort. The party is in Alexandra's attic flat. Marianne will contribute a few bottles of red optimistically labelled Bordeaux. Can it be judged a success? There's Donald the bus conductor with high-brow dreams, nervous bespectacled Bernhardt and Marius the ghostwriter. Not to mention a brace of Peters. It's left to sexy, young Pisa and riotous, middle-aged Mummy (neither invited) to steal the show. Yet, after the party both Marianne and Alexandra find themselves caught in unexpected - sometimes far from romantic - relationships. Meeting people, it turns out, has the most peculiar consequences. Is that really the cost of living?

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Out 25 Aug 2026
The Cost of Living

Discover your new favourite forgotten female classics with the Mermaid collection - No 6- Kathleen Farrell's The Cost of Living with a foreword by Jane Fallon Idealistic Alexandra is throwing a party to meet a more glamorous crowd. Marianne, more sardonic, worries it'll be the usual sort. The party is in Alexandra's attic flat. Marianne will contribute a few bottles...

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Paperback

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781405988766

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 12 March 2026

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 35.0mm

Width: 129.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 500g

Pages: 224

Collections

Classic Fiction Fiction General Fiction Kathleen Farrell Literary Fiction Penguin Books Romance Series: The Mermaid Collection

About the Author

Kathleen Farrell was born in 1912 into a well-off London family. During the Second World War she served as assistant to the secretary-general of the Labour Party, and after the war's end, she founded a literary agency. In 1942 she wrote a ghost story with autobiographical elements, but it was in the 1950s that she embarked on a series of novels entertainingly skewering contemporary life and mores. Physically tiny, Farrell nevertheless was determined and outgoing, having a wide circle of literary friends, acquaintances and even one enemy (she belonged to 'The Lady Novelists' Anti-Elizabeth League', whose members were united in their disdain for fellow novelist Elizabeth Taylor). She died in 1999.

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