What it's like to live now

Like the heart-to-heart conversations you share with your funniest, most honest, most unshockable woman friend, What It's Like to Live Now reveals the intimate details of a singular life as it is lived by a member of a singular generation. In 1968 Meredith Maran was expelled from the elite Bronx High School of Science for leading protests against the Vietnam War. She was an active member of the generation that pledged to change the world, end injustice, and stay young forever. Today (despite all expectations to the contrary) she is forty-three, with an ex-husband, a lover, two teenage sons, and a mortgage on her dream house at the edge of the Oakland ghetto. One thing hasn't changed: Meredith is still asking big questions. How do you justify your decision to stay in the inner city when your son wants to carry a knife to junior high to protect himself? How do you create a happy healthy family when nothing in your childhood taught you how - and your new life partner is a woman? How do you keep your heart open when breast cancer and AIDS are attacking your closest friends? And how do you stay true to your hopes for a better world when there's a living to be made and a homeless man at