The Rules Do Not Apply
Published by Penguin Random House Audio
4/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
A gorgeous memoir about a woman overcoming dramatic loss and finding reinvention—for listeners of Cheryl Strayed and Joan Didion
When thirty-eight-year-old New Yorker writer Ariel Levy left for a reporting trip to Mongolia in 2012, she was pregnant, married, financially secure, and successful on her own terms. A month later, none of that was true.
Levy picks you up and hurls you through the story of how she built an unconventional life and then watched it fall apart with astonishing speed. Like much of her generation, she was raised to resist traditional rules—about work, about love, and about womanhood.
"I wanted what we all want: everything. We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising. We want to be youthful adventurers and middle-aged mothers. We want intimacy and autonomy, safety and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills. But we can't have it all."
In this profound and beautiful memoir, Levy chronicles the adventure and heartbreak of being "a woman who is free to do whatever she chooses." Her own story of resilience becomes an unforgettable portrait of the shifting forces in our culture, of what has changed—and of what is eternal.
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Reviews for The Rules Do Not Apply
89 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Well written and liked the narrator voice but a wandering disjointed story without much plot. Some interesting thought-provoking ideas kept me going.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Thoughtful but not transcendent. It felt like there was something important missing from this one.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The memoir is so honest and raw. The writing is beautiful.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Well crafted writing and an interesting story kept me reading this book, but it doesn't seem finished. I feel like I must have missed something.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Really interesting and intense story about how life doesn't work out the way you thought it would. Definitely worth a listen.