Although I couldn't generate much sympathy for her particular position (I haven't the slightest desire for children, and, gee, a wonderful life in San Francisco, amazing career, hunky husband - that sucks!), the story of her explorations was very thought-provoking. As a single person around the same age with some similarly fluid concepts of what relationships do or don't mean, the book rocked my world. ( )

Ive never encountered a stronger visceral reaction of sheer disgust toward a book or story before this memoir.

Neither sexuality, nor being a parent, are the quintessence of womanhood or discovering yourself.

I've read so many reviews calling this honest or brave. Brave, no. It is not brave to have sex with a dozen lovers to be able to say, "I have lived" on her future death bed, all in response to her husband's vasectomy ending her dream of having children.

It is not empowering. Her husband felt blackmailed into the agreement and rules, rules of which she promptly broke (e.g. safe sex out the window). It is nothing short of selfish, misguided, and sad.

She states of the many things she learned with this experiment that she owed her ex-husband an apology. Then promptly justifies her position of why she had to do this. She was not contrite in how much hurt she put on her (now) ex-husband, she was justifying both her midlife crisis and reasoning for destroying her marriage.

This was a failure on several levels, the biggest of which was thinking she could find herself through sex or motherhood. As a mother and wife, I have had countless conversations with women who discover themselves, myself included, by peeling away the things and labels that people used to define me, to then see to the core of who I was, or they were inside. This is epic soul searching and never once included my identity was defined by sex or husband, partner, children or employment, money in the bank or how good I looked.

This memoir is not brave but I will admit, it was honest: burn down whomever gets in the way in her honest and very selfish, narcissistic justification. Sad, but true. ( )