Book excerpt: By turns provocative and startlingly revealing, MY LIFE AS A BOY is the story of a woman trying to figure out what love is, trying to understand what happens between desire and the determination to possess the object of that desire, and discovering what it's like to go after what you want. "Chernin writes with the grace of a poet and the insight of a psychotherapist, bringing the shape-shifting nature of intimate relationship alive."--San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle