THE MIDDLEPAUSE

If we are forever being asked to strive to turn back the clock, and also to expect it to tick on almost forever, while constantly checking our progress in the mirror, what then of the present? How should a fiftysomething be in a world ceaselessly redefining ageing, youth, and experience? In this subtle but scintillating, unblinking but unfooled exploration of the meanings of middle age in the modern world, Marina Benjamin looks at the evolution over recent decades of our understanding of the purposes and perils of this period in life, and examines her own sudden, brutal propulsion into menopause and into a new definition of her self as daughter, mother, citizen and woman. She deals with pinnacles and pain, mortality and the marginal, loss and lingerie, memory and milestones.

For all those who find themselves around fifty questioning anew their role and their aim as old aims and old roles decay or depart, for those who do not deny it or run away from it, THE MIDDLEPAUSE offers an inspired and expanded vision of how to be middle-aged happily and harmoniously, without sentiment or self-delusion. Marina reads the seers and the sages, and winnows out their chaff, before returning to us with her own inspirational harvest of hard-won and hard-edged knowledge in the form of this bountiful book.

Marina Benjamin is a writer and editor. Her memoirs, Rocket Dreams, was shortlisted for the Eugene Emme Award, and Last Days in Babylon, longlisted for the Wingate Prize. She is currently senior editor at the digital magazine Aeon, and is the founding editor of the Royal Literary Fund's online weekly publication Collected.

ZWISCHENZEITEN
Vom Verstehen der Wechseljahre
Deutsch von Sabine Laengsfeld
[HC Arche 09/2020]