The Middlepause On Turning Fifty

The Middlepause : On Turning Fifty
ISBN: 9781925321340
Publication Date: 1 August 2016

In a society obsessed with living longer and looking younger, what does middle age nowadays mean How should a fifty-something be in a world ceaselessly redefining ageing, youth, and experience The Middlepause offers hope, and heart. Cutting through society's clamorous demands to work longer and stay young, it delivers a clear-eyed account of midlife's challenges. Spurred by her own brutal propulsion into menopause, Marina Benjamin weighs the losses, joys and opportunities of our middle years, taking inspiration from literature and philosophical example.

She uncovers the secret misogynistic history of HRT, and tells us why a dose of Jung is better than a trip to the gym. Attending to ageing parents, the shock of bereavement, parenting a teenager, and her own health woes, she emerges into a new definition of herself as daughter, mother, citizen and woman.Marina Benjamin suggests there's comfort and guidance in memory, milestones and margins, and offers an inspired and expanded vision of how to be middle-aged happily and harmoniously, without sentiment or delusion, making The Middlepause a companion, and a friend.

About the Author

Marina Benjamin is a writer and editor. She is the author of two previous memoirs, Rocket Dreams, shortlisted for the Eugene Emme Award, and Last Days in Babylon, longlisted for the Wingate Prize. She has also worked as a journalist, writing for most of the British broadsheets and serving as arts editor at the New Statesman and deputy arts editor at the Evening Standard. She is currently a senior editor at the digital magazine Aeon.

Review by Caroline Baum

At last someone has written about getting older without focussing on all the prescriptive, preventative and somewhat superficial messages about diet and exercise.