The Rules Do Not Apply - Ariel Levy

"Daring to think that the rules do not apply is the mark of a visionary. It’s also a symptom of narcissism."

How right Levy is in putting that statement out there so early in the book.  It sets the tone for what is to come after, when Levy's entire life falls apart in pretty short order.  It's not a book of great reflection, but in a few small moments--like that one--she hints that maybe, just maybe, she was being narcissistic, and some of this dissolution--not all of it, but some--was partly her fault.

Ariel Levy presents in her memoir the story of a life coming unraveled.  A happy marriage maybe wasn't so happy after all, on either side; a baby died; and everything else went down the drain, too.  Levy starts her account at the end, or nearly at it, and then unspools back to the beginning before everything went right, and then wrong, to tell things in chronological order.  Well, mostly chronological order; there are some flashbacks to her younger days, but mostly the chronology isn't disturbed, and it's easy to see when the timeline changes.

That said, Levy isn't necessarily the most reliable narrator for her own story.  Though there are a few short sentences, buried in the rest of the book, that hint that maybe, maybe she sees her complicity in some of the things that happened here, much of the book is very entitled white girl whining.  (And as an entitled white girl, I know how that looks.)  Levy is, of course, not to blame for her miscarriage, no matter what some of the people in her life seem to think.  However, she barely pauses to consider that hey, her wife's alcoholism might have had something to do with their marriage falling apart, but maybe Levy's own ongoing affair had something to do with it, too?  Just maybe?

Levy has a background in journalism, and it shows here.  The sentences and some of the imagery are wonderful; the pictures she paints of Africa, of the lions, of Mongolia, all of that is wonderful.  It's so wonderful that it's easy to miss how unreflective and unrepentant Levy truly is.  She admits in some small degree that maybe she's a narcissist, drops two or three sentences here or there about, "I didn't think about this then," but never reflects on it later, and ultimately never seems to grow as a person.  There's not a lot of resolution in the book for this, either.  Of course, you can easily Google her name and find out what happened to her, but including something of it might have shown some personal growth, and that's something that was sadly lacking here.  Perhaps this is because there was no internal struggle that would have propelled growth, but rather instead just a stream of whinging, "But it's not fair!  No one understands me!"

Levy's writing carries this book.  But she doesn't seem like a great person, and the lack of reflection or evidence of growth in this book lowered it quite a bit from what I was hoping it would be.

3 stars out of 5.