Sunday's New York Times Book Review gave a rave review to local writer Claire Dederer's memoir, Poser . Let me be more specific: Yoga memoir.

But before you get grumpy about yuppies—Dederer herself wonders if yoga is "Gymnastics for uncoordinated people? A gentle workout for rich women with too much time on their hands?"— read the review . This book sounds pretty awesome, as Dederer, sister of the Presidents of the United States of America singer Dave Dederer, evidently goes the American Beauty route and pulls the yoga mat out from under her superfically comfy existence for some keen storytelling.

Early in “Poser,” Claire Dederer describes a regular walk she takes with a new-mom friend in her North Seattle neighborhood: “We made a circle around Green Lake, and so our talk traveled. We started with our babies and tried to decipher all the new rules we had to follow. The talk opened out to work, maybe briefly touched the real world, and then, like a tight magic circle, closed back in on babies again. It was a dark enchantment.”

This dark enchantment with the joys, rigors and travails of building a family life is at the center of this fine first memoir, and it’s heartening to see a serious female writer take such a risky step into territory where writers of literary ambition fear to tread, lest they be dismissed as trivial. Bills, laundry, cooking, breast-feeding, baby sitters, holidays, aging parents — my favorite curmudgeon, Nietzsche, put it this way: “Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.”

Dederer — a highly self-aware, clever book critic who has contributed to The New York Times Book Review — not only takes on this bad wallpaper as a subject, but she does so within the framework of her discovery of our New Age national pastime: yoga. Yoga! Let the eye-rolling begin. But what makes “Poser” work on a lot of levels is that first in line to ask searching questions and poke fun is the author herself.

“We were a generation of hollow-eyed women, chasing virtue,” she tells us. “We, the mothers of North Seattle, were consumed with trying to do everything right.” North Seattle — a first cousin of Park Slope, the Upper West Side, Berkeley and dozens of other such enclaves around the country — was a place where attachment parenting was all the rage. Kids weren’t weaned until they spoke in full sentences. Families all slept in the same bed; ate the same organic, locally produced food; and lived in an enriching environment safe from the dangers of plastic toys and disposable diapers.

But chasing virtue was making Dederer miserable.