Among other things, it is a book about sexism and love. Fox doesn't spare sexism and is often at her funniest and most original critiquing it. But there isn't any love spared in this book either. Fox is passionate about her kids and finds her relationships with them transcendent and redemptive--in a real-life way, not in a mandatory or moral way. The book ends on a moment of joyous rough-and-tumble laughter between the author and her children. It's how she actually feels.

In fact the whole book is like that: how one extremely perceptive, funny, complicated, generous, and bravely self-revealing woman ACTUALLY FEELS. It is a gift.

The book isn't just for or about mothers. I'm a single woman, childless, straight, in my late 30s, and likely to happily remain that way (with the exception, alas, of my age). I am very close with several mothers and also with some of their kids, and the book helped me understand those friends more deeply. But even more than that, I loved it as a memoir of self-definition--a memoir showing how hard and important it is to be true to who you are.