
Things Fall Apart
The debate about whether women can "have it all" has aged only slightly better than stock photos of women in skirt suits with babies on their hips. Yet the questions at the heart of that worn-out conversation are freshly animated in Ariel Levy's new memoir, The Rules Do Not Apply. Levy defines "it all" as not simply "a career and a family," but a woman's ability to live her life exactly as she wants to. "We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising," she writes. "We want to be youthful adventurers and middle-aged mothers. We want intimacy and autonomy, safety and