The most interesting stuff might have been her discussion of how hetronormative gender roles play out in her own relationship but it also just made me dislike her because she keeps talking about how it's Lucy's job to take care of her. It didn't really reveal anything new for me. Ariel mentions that she loves to journal and maybe the appropriate place for all of this was in a journal.

And at the end she just lists daydreams about where her life might go next. I know life is messy but it's not really something I want to read about. I even empathize with how much it must have hurt to have to end her relationship with Lucy. It's really sad that her child died, and it was an awful thing that she had him in the bathroom. No one is interesting enough that I want to read about their life honestly, unless there are larger points being made. I know that human beings aren't neat narrative packages but I can't stand the way memoirs always do this. Also it just didn't feel like things fit together, she writes about her childhood and meeting Lucy and her mentor but for some reason I wasn't sure what I was supposed to understand when I put all of that together. In the beginning when she's in Africa and hints at ruining her life by talking to an old lover it is really distracting because after that she goes back in time and I had trouble for a while making out what she was talking about and what the time line of things were. It's just that the memoir felt badly put together. I only gave this book three stars because the writing was good and I understand what the author was trying to do. Ariel explores what it means to have freedom and the constant grappling she deals with when she chooses to do things based on her desires. This was only one of the many choices that lead to the implosion of the life she had created with her spouse Lucy, trade offs that eventually did not sustain the relationship, like Ariel's denial about Lucy's drinking. Yet one can not have everything, all choices have trade offs, and waiting so long to get pregnant meant Ariel eventually ended up having no children. Her desire to live outside of traditional expectations led to a life of travel and enjoyment. Ariel wanted a child but she also wanted to pursue her ambitions in journalism and create a financially stable life for herself. Ariel Levy was thirty eight when she got pregnant, before which she had been ambivalent about having a child. The literal summary provided makes even the miscarriage clear. I'm just going to talk openly about what happens in the memoir because it seems as though it's mostly all out there as is, and so I don't want people yelling at me about spoilers.

The rules do not apply by ariel levy