Summary

As a child in the 1970s, Ariel’s favorite game to play with her father is Mummy and Explorer. Already, Ariel has a thirst for adventure. Unlike other little girls, she does not enjoying playing house. Ariel also loves to read, and decides that being a writer is the perfect profession for an independent woman who wants to travel to unfamiliar places.

Levy flashes forward to her early 20s. She is living in Manhattan and working as a typist at New York magazine. Ariel decides she is not going to wait for someone to offer her a writing assignment of her own, so she goes to Queens to research a story about a nightclub for obese women. The women at the club “were magnificent, like enormous birds: feathery false eyelashes fluttering, tight, shiny dresses in peacock blue and canary yellow, the dim light reflecting...