Waiting For Daisy

Peggy Orenstein

Bloomsbury £12.99, pp240

Hold this book close to your ear and you can almost hear it tick. It is as if Orenstein has produced a biological clock for career women - those in their late twenties and early thirties who are convinced that they will one day have a baby - but for whom the time is never right. Perhaps this warning shot is Orenstein's gift to them: a candid account of the torment and grief of one woman swept into the grip of infertility.

'I have been obsessive... I have humiliated myself... I have been wicked,' Orenstein states, honestly. By the end, she has turned into the type of woman she once derided and, worse, come close to destroying her marriage. Waiting For Daisy is a tumultuous ride that makes the reader want to shake Orenstein one minute and hug her the next. It speaks volumes to any woman searching for an answer to that tortuous question: when is it the right time? Here is yet another reminder that a woman's body is often not in sync with her mind. 'The biological clock truly starts ticking at 33,' one doctor tells Orenstein. 'It gets louder and louder at 35 and by 45 it's stopped.'

If you want to know about how women - and their partners - ache through the pain of failing to get pregnant, unsuccessful IVF cycles and miscarriages, read this touching book. 'Mine is the luck of realising that happiness may only be the respite between bouts of pain and so is to be savoured, not taken as an entitlement.'