by Ariel Levy
First published 2017
Ariel Levy chronicles her journey from having what seemed like everything to losing it all in the span of a month. At thirty-eight, the New Yorker writer had built an unconventional life on her own terms. She was pregnant, married, financially secure, and professionally successful when she departed for a reporting assignment in Mongolia in 2012. A month later, none of those things remained true. Levy examines how her generation was raised to reject traditional rules about work, love, and womanhood, pursuing the impossible dream of having everything at once. She wanted a partner who felt like family and a lover who remained exotic and surprising. She craved the excitement of youthful adventure alongside the stability of middle-aged motherhood. The memoir traces both the construction of her unconventional existence and its rapid collapse. Through her personal story of loss and rebuilding, Levy explores what it means to be a woman with complete freedom to choose her path, revealing both the possibilities and perils of rejecting conventional wisdom about how to live.
Genres: autobiography, contemporary, memoir, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century, personal-development
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: personal-journey, rebuilding, unconventional-protagonist
Setting: Mongolia, New York
Period: 2012
207 pages · Hardcover · Random House