In a voice that is wry, disarming, and totally candid, Sandra Tsing Loh tells the moving and laugh-out-loud tale of her roller coaster through "the change." This is not your grandmother's menopause story. Loh chronicles utterly relatable, everyday perils: raising preteen daughters, weathering hormonal changes, and the ups and downs of a career and a relationship. She writes also about an affair and the explosion of her marriage, while managing the legal and marital hijinks of her eighty-nine-year-old dad. The upbeat conclusion: it does get better.

I don't remember exactly when my formerly charming, humorous, omnipotent mother, who would swim a mile out into the ocean to get your beach ball in choppy seas, did the great recede. But she was a tide gradually but
irrevocably washing out, she retreated, she receded, she drifted away, and there was nothing anybody could do about it.

In ancient times, tribal women went alone to caves during menopause. Today, the 50 million menopausal women in America turn to cheery self-help books.

As for Loh and her female friends, they are determined not to go...