About two months ago I agreed to review Tanya Selvaratnam’s The Big Lie: Motherhood, Feminism, and the Reality of the Biological Clock for the Tribune‘s book supplement. And then, once I got into the book, oh boy did I regret it. Not because it was bad – the book actually has much to recommend it. But Selvaratnam’s sprawling attempt to wrangle feminism, biomedical technology, pop culture, and politics into one comprehensible package, combined with her own hotly personal treatment of the evergreen question, “Can women have it all?” managed to rub up against so many still-tender spots in my own personal history that parsing it all out was more challenging than expected.

The results can be found here — and I’ll just add, to those made blind with rage by the subtitle (you appear to be legion), that I do believe the contents within are more nuanced and/or less incendiary than the cover package implies. If you’re interested in the subject, don’t take a pass just because the Prometheus marketing department decided to wave the red flag of feminism.

(If and when that link goes dead, here’s a handy pdf: page 1, page 2)