A BOOB’S LIFE by Leslie Lehr: Excerpt

*Now in development with Salma Hayek as a comedy TV series for HBO Max*

“Leslie Lehr‘s witty, wise, and sometimes heartbreaking memoir, A BOOB’S LIFE, uses our relationship with breasts, and the ways others define us through them, to explore what it means to live in a woman’s body. Original, thought-provoking, and with an elegant sense of humor, A BOOB’S LIFE  is a must-read.”

—Salma Hayek

A BOOB’S LIFE

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.

Excerpt Adapted from A BOOB’S LIFE by Leslie Lehr

P. 209 – 214

Soon after my diagnosis in September of 2012 , I drove slowly down a twisting canyon. I passed the stretch of road where I’d set the car accident in my new novel, the spot where I—I mean, the mother character—drove off a cliff and barely survived. In every scenario in my life, I felt like the mother. Invincible. This sickness was ironically specific. My breast, the very symbol of my mortal purpose, my human destiny to nurture, was now threatened by a disease that could keep me from fulfilling it.

By the time I reached the coast highway, my breast felt like a ticking bomb. My stomach cramped at the thought of my publisher finding out I was sick. The editor had bought my manuscript four months earlier, then asked me to cut a hundred pages. I had canceled all my plans, including my annual mammogram, and had slaved over it all summer. If my editor thought I was too frail to polish and promote the book, she could shut down publication.

But I didn’t want to lie to anyone. I just wanted to pretend this wasn’t happening. There was so much I couldn’t control. But I needed this novel. It was a culmination of everything I’d ever written, everything I knew about the desperate maternal love that still kept me on 24/7 emergency alert. I took my reading glasses off, put the phone back in my purse, and drove across town to drop off my slides at Cedars-Sinai Hospital.

A week later, the waiting was over. My draft was approved, the release date locked for spring, and Target was featuring it as a Recommended Read. I hit the highway to meet my surgeon. I circled the Beverly Center in West Hollywood, where a date had once abandoned me to drool over Angelyne. Then I found the breast cancer center.

Inside the waiting room, sunlight shone through the windows on quiet couples and families watching a game show on TV. I sat down in a corner chair, pulled a work file from my briefcase, and then skimmed through manuscript notes my editor had sent with the signed contract. One item she wanted clarified was about a minor character who had breast cancer. Startled, I closed the folder. I’d written that as a random affliction, like filling in the blank in a Mad Libs game. Just a coincidence, I told myself.

Soon I was ushered into an exam room, where I put on a cotton robe that opened in the front. Assorted men in white lab coats came in and felt me up far more thoroughly than any date ever had.

When the doctors left, I tied the cloth belt in a bow and finger-combed my hair just to feel human. A nurse in pink scrubs slipped inside and logged onto my computer records. Then a striking man with a wreath of silver hair and a tie peeking out from his white lab coat strode in with an air of brilliance.

Tests showed that my tumor had more than tripled in size in less than a month. It needed to be removed right away. I regretted delaying my mammogram, so I explained why I did. He assured me that the delay did no harm. In fact, had I done my annual mammogram on schedule in May, the tumor might not have shown up at all.

“Can you operate tomorrow?” I asked.

He chuckled and explained that he needed another biopsy, blood work, blah, blah, blah. He suggested we wait a few weeks. That sounded like forever. What if it tripled again?
I exhaled, realizing I’d been holding my breath.

You know how they say your life flashes before you when you face death? That didn’t happen to me. When I felt the pressure lift, my next thought was about the future. Of course, I needed to get this book out. How strange to think that this novel, What a Mother Knows, had saved my life.

But there was more. I wanted to see both of my children happy. I wanted to enjoy being married to my husband. I wanted to live by the ocean.

When my editor had broached the book’s new title, I’d laughed, thinking a mother knows nothing. Now I appreciated it, with a different interpretation. A mother knew she would do anything for love.

Dr. G asked if anyone in my family had had breast cancer. I shrugged. He insisted I take the BRCA test for the breast cancer gene, which is more common in Ashkenazi Jews like me, in case I needed to consider a mastectomy.

After the appointment, I needed my go-to comfort food—frozen yogurt with sprinkles— and fast. Everything felt better when I got back in the car across from the yogurt store. Then I pulled away from the curb in a U-turn and crashed into a van. A handicapped van. Driven by a disabled teenager. My bumper broke his axle, so he couldn’t even get out of the car while we waited for the tow truck. I waited by his open window and could not stop apologizing. His father showed up with a fancy long-lens camera hanging from a strap around his neck.

“I might have to get my breasts cut off,” I told the dad, but he hardly said a word.

The police arrived, and everyone took pictures.

Then I went to say goodnight to the boy. He was writing a blog about the football injury that had put him in a wheelchair, and I was grateful to be able to offer writing advice if he needed it. He was fine. I was fine. Neither of us was really fine, but the accident was just another bump in the road.

Adapted from A Boob’s Life: How America’s Obsession Shaped Me—And You by Leslie Lehr. Published by Pegasus Books. © Leslie Lehr. Reprinted with permission.

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Leslie Lehr explores the duality of today’s women to navigate a new path between sexy and sacred. Salma Hayek is developing Leslie’s critically acclaimed new memoir, A Boob’s Life, into a comedy series for HBO Max. A prize-winning writer, Leslie’s books include What A Mother Knows, a Target Recommended Read, Wife Goes On, and 66 Laps, winner of the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Prize. Her nonfiction books include Welcome to Club Mom, Club Grandma, excerpted on FisherPrice.com, and Wendy Bellissimo: Nesting, featured on Oprah.

Leslie’s personal essays have appeared in the New York Times Modern Love column (narrated by Katie Couric on NPR), HuffPost, Yourtango, and in anthologies including Mommy Wars, The Honeymoon’s Over, and On Becoming Fearless. She wrote the original screenplays for the indie romantic thriller, Heartless, and the comedy-drama, Club Divorce.

Leslie has also worked in film production, including Prince’s “Sign ‘O the Times,” Charles Bukowski’s “Barfly, “ and the cult thriller, “Witchboard.”

She has a BA from the USC School of Cinematic Arts where she won a Student Emmy, and an MFA from Antioch. A breast cancer survivor, she is “Chemo Chick” on Sickofpink.com.

Leslie is the Novel Consultant for Truby Writers Studio and taught for ten years in the Writer’s Program at UCLA. Leslie is a judge for the WFWA debut novel contest, a member of PEN, the Authors Guild, WGA, Women In Film, the ACLU, and The Women’s Leadership Council of L.A.

Leslie Lehr has two daughters, two cats, and lives with her husband, John Truby, as close to the beach as possible in southern California.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing