Review Excerpt:

For Keeps: Women Tell the Truth About Their Bodies,Growing Older, and Acceptance Edited by Victoria Zackheim. Seal, $15.95 paper (256p) ISBN978-1-58005-204-7Nora Ephron’s bestselling I Feel Bad About My Neck hasperhaps opened the door to discussing the failings ofthe female body and of female aging, and the 27contributors to this collection deserve gratitude forenlarging the discussion. The essays detail a plethoraof possible events associated with aging: agingmothers and mothers-in-law, one’s own increasingfrailty and final illnesses. There are deaths anddivorces after long-lived marriages. Othercontributors write of the abrupt arrival in the worldof acute or chronic illness. Two very differentthreads run throughout the essays. One is the degreeto which each writer has found a way to retain orregain a sense of power over her life. The other isthe power of childhood messages and experiences toresonate for decades. Standouts include PW Reviewsdirector Louisa Ermelino’s luminous account of hermother’s and husband’s final illnesses, and LizaNelson’s wonderful story of her doublemastectomy—she’s thrilled to be rid of the enormousappendages that had tormented her all her life. (Dec.)