This profound and daring novel explores all that is lost and gained between teenage girlhood and middle-aged motherhood. Diana stands before the mirror with her best friend, Maureen. She is imagining her future life as a forty-year-old wife and mother-a future that will be paid for by a horrific decision she has just been forced to make. In prose infused with the dramatically feminine sensuality of spring, we experience seventeen-year-old Diana's uncertain steps into womanhood-her awkward, heated forays into sex; her sudden fits of pride that alternate with her deep insecurities; her fresh, fragile construction of an identity. And against the stunning precision of the sights and sounds of renewal, we experience the tasks of Diana's adulthood-protecting her beloved daughter and holding onto her successful husband, her exuberance muted by the relief of having made a home and a life. Laura Kasischke has ingeniously created a consciousness that encompasses both the truth of a teenager's world and the profound transformation of that world at midlife. Shocking, sensually charged, and stunningly original, The Life Before Her Eyes, like the best poetry, finds piercing beauty in the midst of horror and celebrates the glory of life in the face of death.