Ariel Levy's 2013 essay 'Thanksgiving in Mongolia' is one of the best pieces of nonfiction I have ever read. If I taught a class on the essay, I would make every damn student memorize it. Levy, a staff writer at The New Yorker, has expanded on this essay into a full memoir out in March, The Rules Do Not Apply. I read it in one big messy gulp, because it is beautiful and heartbreaking and unruly and real. You should preorder it immediately so you can fall into her complicated, funny, and finely wrought world as soon as humanly possible.-Lenny.com

The Rules Do Not Apply is this year's must-read memoir.-W

A thoroughly modern memoir, the elements of The Rules Do Not Apply seem plucked not from the script of Girls, which has also been exploring reproductive issues of late, but Transparent-even Portlandia.-The New York Times

In reflecting on her own life, Levy's tone is deeply honest, and at the same time manages to not be defensive or apologetic about her decisions; she's not judgmental, but remains highly inquisitive. It's a delicate balance, one rarely pulled off. The through line is her struggle to see things as accurately as possible, to translate her gift for interview and narrative into something personally productive. . . . I loved Levy's book, and have followed her work for years, which made interviewing her a slight struggle. I had to navigate around what personally resonated with me and what would mean a great deal to other. . . . If you take anything away from our conversation, I hope it's that you should read The Rules Do Not Apply.-Jezebel

Frank and unflinchingly sincere . . . A gut-wrenching, emotionally charged work of soul-baring writing in the spirit of Joan Didion, Helen Macdonald, and Elizabeth Gilbert, The Rules Do Not Apply is a must-read for women.-Bustle

Levy has the rare gift of seeing herself with fierce, unforgiving clarity. And she deploys prose to match, raw and agile. She plumbs the commotion deep within and takes the measure of her have-it-all generation.-The Atlantic

Cheryl Strayed meets a Nora Ephron movie. You'll laugh, ugly cry, and finish it before the weekend's over.-theSkimm

[The Rules Do Not Apply] is a short, sharp American memoir in the Mary Karr tradition of life-chronicling. Which is to say that Levy, like Karr, is a natural writer who is also as unsparing and bleakly hilarious as it's possible to be about oneself. . . . I devoured her story in one sitting. It felt, well, greedy. But 'greedy' is how the author characterises herself, so it seemed fine, hopeful even, to read her work in the same way, perhaps absorbing as I went a tiny bit of Levy's remarkable resilience and appetite for life.-Financial Times

It's an act of courage to hunt for meaning within grief, particularly if the search upends your life and shakes out the contents for all the world to sift through. Ariel Levy embarks on the hunt beautifully in her new memoir. . . . The Rules Do Not Apply is a search for meaning, not reason. It doesn't seek an explanation (outside of the medical one) for the death of Levy's son, any more than it seeks to explain away the love, fear, frustration and other experiences and emotions that take place within her lifetime. Her grief becomes a new part of her-something to understand and get used to. . . . She's brave and generous to share her story, which manages to be beautiful, even as it's stark and wrenching.-Chicago Tribune

I read The Rules Do Not Apply in one long, rapt sitting. Unflinching and intimate, wrenching and revelatory, Ariel Levy's powerful memoir about love, loss, and finding one's way shimmers with truth and heart on every page.-Cheryl Strayed

Every deep feeling a human is capable of will be shaken loose by this profound book. Ariel Levy has taken grief and made art out of it.-David Sedaris

Ariel Levy is a writer of uncompromising honesty, remarkable clarity, and surprising humor gathered from the wreckage of tragedy. Her ac