A Boob's Life: How America's Obsession Shaped Me...and You by Leslie Lehr
Nonfiction. Memoir, 384 pages
Published May 9, 2023 by Pegasus Books
A Boob’s Life explores the surprising truth about women’s most popular body part with vulnerable, witty frankness and true nuggets of American culture that will resonate with everyone who has breasts—or loves them.
Author Leslie Lehr wants to talk about boobs. She’s gone from size AA to DDD and everything between, from puberty to motherhood, enhancement to cancer, and beyond. And she’s not alone—these are classic life stages for women today.
At turns funny and heartbreaking, A Boob’s Life explores both the joys and hazards inherent to living in a woman’s body. Lehr deftly blends her personal narrative with national history, starting in the 1960s with the women’s liberation movement and moving to the current feminist dialogue and what it means to be a woman. Her insightful and clever writing analyzes how America’s obsession with the female form has affected her own life’s journey and the psyche of all women today.
From her prize-winning fiction to her viral New York Times Modern Love essay, exploring the challenges facing contemporary women has been Lehr’s life-long passion. A Boob’s Life, her first project since breast-cancer treatment, continues this mission, taking readers on a wildly informative, deeply personal, and utterly relatable journey. No matter your gender, you’ll never view this sexy and sacred body part the same way again.
(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first line.)
First lines—"My nipples are cross-eyed. I see it clearly in the bathroom mirror the moment I step out of the shower."
Leslie Lehr's book A Boob's Life is an insightful look at the way society views an important and much talked about, and joked about, woman's body part. All women have them, and I would venture to say that most of us find something wrong with our breasts—our boobs. Leslie's book brought up topics and historical information about this important body part that made me stop and think.
Struggling with her self image as it related to her being a woman and obsessing over her breasts—because that's what society does—she then discovers she has breast cancer. She feels like she has been betrayed by her body. She opens up to all of us, sharing all of the thoughts, emotions, and struggles she goes through, not only with her breast cancer, but also as a woman trying to present the image that society wants her to be.
This was an eye-opening read for me that made me think long and hard about society's obsession with this female body part and brought up thoughts and feelings I had not considered in the past. A very thought-provoking book!
I received A Boob's Life from the publisher and this is my honest opinion.
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About the author
Leslie Lehr is the prize-winning author of "A Boob's Life: How American's Obsession Shaped Me... and You". Called a Must-read by Good Morning America, People Magazine, Glamour, and Entertainment Tonight, Salma Hayek's Ventanarosa Productions is developing it as a comedy series for HBO Max. Lehr's novels include What A Mother Knows, Wife Goes On, and, 66 Laps. She wrote the screenplay for the romantic thriller, Heartless, and three humorous parenting books including, Welcome to Club Mom.
Katie Couric narrated Lehr's New York Times Modern Love essay on NPR. Other essays have appeared in the infamous Mommy Wars, Arianna Huffington's On Becoming Fearless, The Honeymoon's Over, and Now Write.
Leslie is the Novel Consultant for Truby's Writers Studio, a member of PEN, The Authors Guild, WGA, and Women In Film, and taught for the Writer's Program at UCLA. She won a student Emmy and earned a B.A. at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and an MFA from Antioch. She is a mom, a breast cancer survivor, and lives with her husband John Truby, and two rescue cats, in Southern California.
You can download a Book Club Guide and learn more at www.leslielehr.com. Follow and chat with Leslie at FB/authorleslielehr, IG leslielehr1, TW @leslielehr1, and Linked IN.
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