Synopses & Reviews
Waiting for Daisy is about loss, love, anger and redemption. It's about doing all the things you swore you'd never do to get something you hadn't even been sure you wanted. It's about being a woman in a confusing, contradictory time. It's about testing the limits of a loving marriage. And it's about trying (and trying and trying) to have a baby.
Orenstein's story begins when she tells her new husband that she's not sure she ever wants to be a mother; it ends six years later after she's done almost everything humanly possible to achieve that goal, from "fertility sex" to escalating infertility treatments to New Age remedies to forays into international adoption. Her saga unfolds just as professional women are warned by the media to heed the ticking of their biological clocks, and just as fertility clinics have become a boom industry, with over two million women a year seeking them out. Buffeted by one jaw-dropping obstacle after another, Orenstein seeks answers both medical and spiritual in America and Asia, along the way visiting an old flame who's now the father of fifteen, and discovering in Japan a ritual of surprising solace. All the while she tries to hold onto a marriage threatened by cycles, appointments, procedures and disappointments. Waiting for Daisy is an honest, wryly funny report from the front, an intimate page-turner that illuminates the ambivalence, obsession, and sacrifice that characterize so many modern women's lives.
Review
"A gripping memoir of one woman's quest for a baby...honest, fascinating, and wholly enlightening." Cathi Hanauer, author of Sweet Ruin and editor of The Bitch in the House
Review
"Moving and bittersweet, Waiting for Daisy is as funny, thoughtful, biting, reflective, as filled with fruitful self-doubt and cautious exuberance, as its author." Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Review
"So remarkable is Orenstein's account that it seems likely to become the platinum standard for memoirs regarding couples struggling to become parents." Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Review
"[B]ittersweet and born of some painful lessons. It will surely resonate with anyone who has been an expectant parent especially those whose expectations have been challenged." Minneapolis Star Tribune
Review
"Orenstein has written a memoir, a confession, a polemic and a love story all at once, describing the most frantic and confusing period of her life with clarity and candor." Los Angeles Times
Synopsis
Waiting for Daisy is about loss, love, anger and redemption. It's about doing all the things you swore you'd never do to get something you hadn't even been sure you wanted. It's about being a woman in a confusing, contradictory time. It's about testing the limits of a loving marriage. And it's about trying (and trying and trying) to have a baby.
Orenstein's story begins when she tells her new husband that she's not sure she ever wants to be a mother; it ends six years later after she's done almost everything humanly possible to achieve that goal, from "fertility sex" to escalating infertility treatments to New Age remedies to forays into international adoption. Her saga unfolds just as professional women are warned by the media to heed the ticking of their biological clocks, and just as fertility clinics have become a boom industry, with over two million women a year seeking them out. Buffeted by one jaw-dropping obstacle after another, Orenstein seeks answers both medical and spiritual in America and Asia, along the way visiting an old flame who's now the father of fifteen, and discovering in Japan a ritual of surprising solace. All the while she tries to hold onto a marriage threatened by cycles, appointments, procedures and disappointments.
Waiting for Daisy is an honest, wryly funny report from the front, an intimate page-turner that illuminates the ambivalence, obsession, and sacrifice that characterize so many modern women's lives.
Synopsis
An intimate memoir of one woman's quest for motherhood details her six-year odyssey, from her decision at age thirty-five that she wants a baby, through her desperate pursuit of everything humanly possible to achieve her goal, to the repercussions of the ordeal for her marriage. By the author of Schoolgirls. 60,000 first printing.
Synopsis
“Dazzling…the platinum standard for memoirs regarding couples struggling to become parents.”—Seattle Post-Intelligencer Peggy Orensteins widely hailed and bestselling memoir of her quest for parenthood begins when she tells her new husband that shes not sure she ever wants to be a mother; it ends six years later after shes done almost everything humanly possible to achieve that goal. Buffeted by one obstacle after another, Orenstein seeks answers both medical and spiritual in America and Asia, all the while trying to hold on to a marriage threatened by cycles, appointments, procedures, and disappointments. Waiting for Daisy is both an intimate page-turner and a wrly funny report from the front.
About the Author
Peggy Orenstein is the author of Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap, and Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids and Life in a Half-Changed World. A Contributing Writer to the New York Times Magazine, her work has also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Elle, Vogue, Discover, Mother Jones, Salon, and The New Yorker. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Steven Okazaki, and their daughter, Daisy Tomoko.