For Keeps: Women Tell the Truth About Their Bodies, Growing Older, and Acceptance

Publishers Weekly

Nora Ephron's bestselling I Feel Bad About My Neckhas perhaps opened the door to discussing the failings of the female body and of female aging, and the 27 contributors to this collection deserve gratitude for enlarging the discussion. The essays detail a plethora of possible events associated with aging: aging mothers and mothers-in-law, one's own increasing frailty and final illnesses. There are deaths and divorces after long-lived marriages. Other contributors write of the abrupt arrival in the world of acute or chronic illness. Two very different threads run throughout the essays. One is the degree to which each writer has found a way to retain or regain a sense of power over her life. The other is the power of childhood messages and experiences to resonate for decades. Standouts include PWReviews director Louisa Ermelino's luminous account of her mother's and husband's final illnesses, and Liza Nelson's wonderful story of her double mastectomy-she's thrilled to be rid of the enormous appendages that had tormented her all her life. (Dec.)