Orenstein - Waiting for Daisy : a tale of two continents, three religions, five infertility doctors, an Oscar, an atomic bomb, a romantic night, and one womans quest to become a mother

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

An absolutely wonderful book. I couldnt put it down: it reads as easily and yet with as much texture as a novel. As always, Orenstein is both so smart and so human as she tells her storyand ours, tooabout her marriage, career, indecision, breast cancer, and whether or not she can, and wants to, and ought to, get pregnant. Sometimes the writing is wrenching, sometimes very funny, but always profoundly honest and engaging.

Anne Lamott, bestselling author ofOperating Instructions

Add to the best literature of motherhood Peggy Orensteins searing account of her six-year quest to have a child. The story of what she put her body through is beautifully and movingly rendered, but its her honesty in examining her own mind and heart that make Waiting for Daisy such a courageous and unforgettable book. I was enthralled.

Ann Packer, author ofThe Dive from Clausens Pier

A gripping memoir of one womans quest for a baby...honest, fascinating, and wholly enlightening.

Cathi Hanauer, author ofSweet Ruin
and editor ofThe Bitch in the House

Just when you think there is no more to say about the comedy and tragedy of infertility, Peggy Orenstein comes along and changes your mind. This may be the most honest book written about the tsunami of emotion that hits women when what should come most naturallyreproductionbecomes instead one vast, expensive science experiment, and one more likely to fail than not. Orensteinwhose obsession with getting pregnant (after breast cancer and the loss of an ovary, no less) almost derails her career, her marriage and her sanityis terrific at exploring the struggle of the intellect and the heart: As a feminist, shes always said she wont be defined by motherhood, but there she is in the bathroom, frantically poking her insides to determine if todays cervical mucous is gorgeous.With its startlingly mundane happy ending, Daisy is a fine meditation on what it means to live a fulfilled life.

People

Waiting for Daisy is riveting...Its no small feat to write a page turner that gives away the ending on the dust jacket, but Waiting for Daisy is more than just the Perils of Peggy. 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

Peggy Orensteins journey [is] suspenseful [and]...unsparing... the book describes Orensteins rapid descent into the surreal community of the subfertile...Its to Orensteins considerable credit that even when shes naked from the waist down, she never really takes her reporters hat off, applying the same measured scrutiny to a junior-high-school boyfriend with a brood of 15 or the plight of women left barren and disfigured by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima as she does to her own ultimately happily resolved situation...Orensteins interrogation of her own profiteering pregnancy retinue comes across as a welcome, even necessary expos.

New York Times Book Review

Waiting for Daisy? No term as passive as waiting begins to describe how Peggy Orenstein clawed her way to motherhood like a climber scaling Mount Everest in a gale-force blizzard... caustically funny, the author brings alarming frankness to a familiar story of baby lust run amok.

Boston Globe

The story of author Peggy Orensteins struggle with infertility is riveting, but what really makes her new memoir such a compelling read is her refreshing honesty about the complicated emotions many women face on the path to motherhood.

Parenting

A raw, funny and poignant memoir...she writes keenly and with humor about the difficult road her quest takes. By the time I reached the end of the book, I was crying into my latte. Orensteins memoir is not just hers; it is the story of a generation of women who dared to wait for motherhood, took risks to achieve it and were brave enough to question their decisions every step of the way.

More

Funny, self-knowing and sometimes wise...The, outcome of this story may seem obvious, but thats less important than how Orenstein gets there.

Chicago Tribune

[Orenstein] treats her efforts to become a mother with intelligent skepticism and a brazen sense of humor (a quality not often found in Repro Lit)...Unlike many women who have written about the experience of trying and failing to have a baby, Orenstein doesnt leave her feminism at the door. She writes frankly about her initial reluctance to become a mother and traces the complicated evolution of her feelings from no! never! to single-minded passion. Once launched on the all-consuming path, she makes stops that will be familiar to many of her readers...But her voice makes all the difference in the world. Far from the anguished, often reverential, super-serious tone of Internet discussion groups...One of the best things about this book is that when she succeeds in her quest, Orenstein refuses to take refuge in the smug pieties so prevalent in fertility discussions. When a friend tells her that everything happens for a reason, Orenstein bristles (bless her!)...As Daisy moves on through life, and her mother and father move with her through the parenting maze, it would be interesting to hear Orensteins intelligent, skeptical voice ruminate on the next stages. For if any writer has the verve and tenacity to supersede the typecasting of Mommy Lit, its Orenstein.

Washington Post

Peggy Orenstein is an accomplished journalist, and she skillfully and vividly tells this tale in which, after eight months of failing to conceive, a very intelligent, well-educated woman succumbs to the blandishments of fertility specialists...she writes far better and more coherently than the other writers of her cohort who have worked this beat, Naomi Wolf and Susan Faludi. She is also more humorous...She is never less than good at portraying the descent into the world of infertility...unlike Faludi and Wolf, Orenstein can think enough outside the feminist box... Stay tuned for the next installment.

First Things

The author has a curious, tenacious mind and a courageous spirit, both of which are much in evidence here. But what makes the book really riveting is the spectacle of Orensteina devoted, polemical feministcoming to terms with her powerful need to be a mother...[a] painfully honest journey...She tells the truth about it, and in doing so gives us a complex, endearing and deeply feminist book.

Raleigh News and Observer

You dont have to be coping with infertility yourself to fall in love with Orensteins memoir of the long and difficult road to parenthood...Her persona is irresistible. She is funny, irreverent, blunt and ever aware of what is happening to her mentally and physically.

Arizona Republic

Ebullient, heart-wrenching, and honest, Daisy delves into how the pain of trying to conceive can fray even the happiest marriage. Part of Orensteins genius is how she stretches her subject like a rubber band to write engagingly about single-by-choice Japanese women (theyre called parasites), rituals marking miscarriage and abortion, and the courage of a Hiroshima survivor whose face was destroyed. Funny and wise,