Composing a Life

By profiling five highly productive women--herself and four friends--Bateson, daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, and author of With a Daughter's Eye , aims to shed light on personal and career obstacles women face in achieving success. All five women, she claims, have lived life as an improvisational art form. Her friends are Joan Erikson, dancer and craftsperson; Alice d'Entremont, electrical enginer for Skylab equipment and CEO of a high-tech firm; Ellen Bassuk, a psychiatrist who works with the homeless; and Johnnetta Cole, the first black woman president of Spelman College in Atlanta. Loosely intertwined with the subjects' lives are chapters devoted to topics such as marriage, homemaking, commitment, caretaking and the multiple roles women play. While the book's premise is intriguing, the telling is self-indulgent and only sporadically illuminates the author's themes. Author tour. (Oct.)