Coming of Middle Age


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Wayward


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A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A “furious and addictive new novel” (The New York Times) about mothers and daughters, and one woman's midlife reckoning as she flees her suburban life. “Exhilarating ... reads like a burning fever dream. A virtuosic, singular and very funny portrait of a woman seeking sanity and purpose in a world gone mad.” —The New York Times Book Review Samantha Raymond's life has begun to come apart: her mother is ill, her teenage daughter is increasingly remote, and at fifty-two she finds herself staring into "the Mids"—that hour of supreme wakefulness between three and four in the morning in which women of a certain age suddenly find themselves contemplating motherhood, mortality, and, in this case, the state of our unraveling nation. When she falls in love with a beautiful, decrepit house in a hardscrabble neighborhood in Syracuse, she buys it on a whim and flees her suburban life—and her family—as she grapples with how to be a wife, a mother, and a daughter, in a country that is coming apart at the seams. Dana Spiotta's Wayward is a stunning novel about aging, about the female body, and about female complexity in contemporary America. Probing and provocative, brainy and sensual, it is a testament to our weird times, to reforms and resistance and utopian wishes, and to the beauty of ruins.




Overgrown


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A darkly humorous peek into the fascinating mind of an outwardly proficient middle aged female.




Come of Age


Book Description

In his landmark provocative style, Stephen Jenkinson makes the case that we must birth a new generation of elders, one poised and willing to be true stewards of the planet and its species. Come of Age does not offer tips on how to be a better senior citizen or how to be kinder to our elders. Rather, with lyrical prose and incisive insight, Stephen Jenkinson explores the great paradox of elderhood in North America: how we are awash in the aged and yet somehow lacking in wisdom; how we relegate senior citizens to the corner of the house while simultaneously heralding them as sage elders simply by virtue of their age. Our own unreconciled relationship with what it means to be an elder has yielded a culture nearly bereft of them. Meanwhile, the planet boils, and the younger generation boils with anger over being left an environment and sociopolitical landscape deeply scarred and broken. Taking on the sacred cow of the family, Jenkinson argues that elderhood is a function rather than an identity—it is not a position earned simply by the number of years on the planet or the title “parent” or “grandparent.” As with his seminal book Die Wise, Jenkinson interweaves rich personal stories with iconoclastic observations that will leave readers radically rethinking their concept of what it takes to be an elder and the risks of doing otherwise. Part critique, part call to action, Come of Age is a love song inviting us—imploring us—to elderhood in this time of trouble. That time is now. We’re an hour before dawn, and first light will show the carnage, or the courage, we bequeath to the generations to come.




Act Your Age: A Coming of (Middle) Age Memoir


Book Description

"Act your age! From her mother's admonition in childhood, a middle ages, twice-married mother of four and a product of the deep south of the seventies makes her way though a meandering inner journey towards a quiet epiphany revealing what her mother's words really mean. This rite of passage at the ungainly age of fifty unfolds through twelve memoir-like narratives that will evoke both laughter and tears. Each chapter is an independent reflection on the dozens of daily anecdotes all of us live each day in the course of growing up and growing older. Reading the narratives may be like going through a shoe box of old photographs you find in the attic, not arrange in any seeming order, but, in total, creating a logic of their own. Memorable characters like Papa, Aunt Norma, Harrison Augustus Turnbull, and Artemesia rise from the narrator's southern Gothic roots. The narrator, nameless Every Woman, prides herself in being an introspective and competent adult, but her naiveté demonstrates that being an adult a really a state of mind, and finding truth is like entertaining company with chipped china. Coping with life's poignant struggles, like disease, old age, suicide, and murder, and its ordinary ones, like child-raising, teaching, pets, and church-going, she seeks sense in the nonsense with humor and with love"--Page 4 of cover.




Separation Anxiety


Book Description

The woman in this book is not famous. The events of her life are not tragic. The setting is not exotic. This is an ordinary story. Which makes it an extraordinary memoir. Miji Campbell grew up in a close-knit family in the 1960s and '70s. The youngest of three girls, she was raised under her parents' watchful eye, in a middle-class Calgary suburb called Kingsland. Her life proceeds in an orderly fashion: coming-of-age, university, first job, first apartment-and then suddenly, inexplicably, it begins to unravel. Night after night, Miji wrestles with insomnia and increasing anxiousness. Despite her independent spirit, she yearns for her mother's presence and feels overcome by homesickness. These anxious feelings will haunt her through career, marriage, and the birth of her children. It's not until middle age that Miji learns she has an anxiety disorder and finds ways to quiet her mind and body. Through acts of courage and grace, she learns to stand-tentatively, hopefully-on her own. Beautifully written, insightful and funny,ÿSeparation Anxietyÿchronicles the pivotal moments in a woman's life where she lets go of her childhood beliefs about happily ever after, and discovers her true self. "Anyone who has struggled with anxiety and depression will be consoled by the author's fearless, vivid portrait of breakdown and recovery." -Marni Jackson, author ofÿThe Mother Zone. "An honest and courageous memoir. The narrator's voice sparkles with intelligence, with a sharply observant eye, and with a quirky, wry sense of humour. She charts the ties that bind, sometimes far too tightly, the bond of love between mother and daughter." -Wendy Donawa, co-author ofÿReading Canada.




Real Estate


Book Description

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, the Washington Post, TIME.com, and Kirkus A Millions Most Anticipated Book of the Year A USA Today Book Not to Miss A LitHub Best-Reviewed Book of the Year The final installment in three-time Booker Prize nominated Deborah Levy's Living Autobiography-a boldly intimate meditation on home and the specters that haunt it. “Three bicycles. Seven ghosts. A crumbling apartment block on the hill. Fame. Tenderness. The statue of Peter Pan. Silk. Melancholy. The banana tree. A love story.” Virginia Woolf wrote that in order to be a writer, a woman needs a room of one's own. Now, in Real Estate, acclaimed author Deborah Levy concludes her ground-breaking trilogy of living autobiographies with an exhilarating, boldly intimate meditation on home and the specters that haunt it. In this vibrant memoir, Levy employs her characteristic indelible writing, sharp wit, and acute insights to craft a searing examination of the poetics and politics of ownership. Her inventory of possessions, real and imagined, pushes readers to question our cultural understanding of belonging and belongings and to consider the value of a woman's intellectual and personal life. Blending personal history, gender politics, philosophy, and literary theory, Real Estate is a brilliant, compulsively readable narrative about the search for home.




Welcome to Middle Age!


Book Description

This pathology of midlife has even recently begun to be exported to all territories in the contemporary world system; people around the world are being invited to change the way they think about mature adulthood and to adopt the middle-class American version of middle age.




Coming Out of the Middle Ages


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The essays in this volume examine China's medievalism from the viewpoint of cultural history, philosophy and comparative literature. Contributors discuss the lingering effects of the Middle Ages on Chinese thought and industry, and assess how these attitudes affect China's relations with the West.




There Are No Grown-ups


Book Description

The best-selling author of BRINGING UP BÉBÉ investigates life in her forties, and wonders whether her mind will ever catch up with her face. When Pamela Druckerman turns 40, waiters start calling her "Madame," and she detects a disturbing new message in mens' gazes: I would sleep with her, but only if doing so required no effort whatsoever. Yet forty isn't even technically middle-aged anymore. And after a lifetime of being clueless, Druckerman can finally grasp the subtext of conversations, maintain (somewhat) healthy relationships and spot narcissists before they ruin her life. What are the modern forties, and what do we know once we reach them? What makes someone a "grown-up" anyway? And why didn't anyone warn us that we'd get cellulite on our arms? Part frank memoir, part hilarious investigation of daily life, There Are No Grown-Ups diagnoses the in-between decade when... • Everyone you meet looks a little bit familiar. • You're matter-of-fact about chin hair. • You can no longer wear anything ironically. • There's at least one sport your doctor forbids you to play. • You become impatient while scrolling down to your year of birth. • Your parents have stopped trying to change you. • You don't want to be with the cool people anymore; you want to be with your people. • You realize that everyone is winging it, some just do it more confidently. • You know that it's ok if you don't like jazz. Internationally best-selling author and New York Times contributor Pamela Druckerman leads us on a quest for wisdom, self-knowledge and the right pair of pants. A witty dispatch from the front lines of the forties, There Are No Grown-ups is a (midlife) coming-of-age story, and a book for anyone trying to find their place in the world.