If you were to look at the bestseller book lists, you would see a clear trend: perimenopause is definitely (finally?) a zeitgeist topic and three new books tell three very different tales of that chaos. We look at the latest offerings in the perimenopausal novel genre.
As part of our ongoing look at perimenopause, we spoke to Dr Menopause specialist, Dr Jenny Hill, where she referred the fact that perimenopause can be up to a decade of “hormonal chaos”. If you were to look at the bestseller book lists, you would see a clear trend: perimenopause is definitely (finally?) a zeitgeist topic and three new books tell three very different tales of that chaos.
Recently on our Instagram page, we ran a poll about the idea of middle age – how old do we consider middle age to be, how the idea of middle age has changed and how we feel about it. One of the comments that came up several times was a feeling of dread – that there was nothing to look forward to, that things would only get harder and possibly duller.
But one of the common threads in all these books is how vibrant, chaotic and loving this time can be – you can use many words to describe the lives of the women in these three books, but ‘boring’ isn’t one of them. All three books prove that there is a lot to look forward to and that there is no expiration date on making giant life changes, following your desires and being fun and messy as hell.
All Fours By Miranda July
In Miranda July’s epic novel, All Fours, it is only after she has careened wildly around her life choices for a few months that a regular doctor’s appointment first brings the possibility of perimenopause to the forefront. Like most of us, the 45-year-old assumes that menopause is a faraway problem that starts when hot flashes arrive – rather than the actual reality, which is that hot flashes are one of the final stages.
When the doctor shows her the hormonal dive her estrogen is about to go through – the cliff, as it is sometimes called – the protagonist doesn’t use this new knowledge as a calming explanation for why she’s been all over the place. Nope, she doubles down on her desires, desperately seeking to enjoy them while she can, before the clock runs out.
So much of being a woman is based on good behaviour… what happens when the energy to maintain that good behaviour starts to run out?
The plot of All Fours is glorious; one the eve of her 45th birthday, the protagonist (we never get her name) decides she’s going to head to New York for a week without her husband and young child, blow the commission cheque she’s just been given, and enjoy herself.
Then, she decides to add to this concept: she’s going to do a cross-country drive instead – not because she wants to, but because she wants to be the kind of person who wants to do an epic solo road trip for her birthday. Halfway through her life, she reasons, seems like the perfect time to completely change her personality.
But change arrives faster than that. Twenty minutes into her drive, she pulls off to get petrol, makes intense eye contact with the young man who washes her windscreen, abandons her trip, checks into a local hotel and doesn’t leave. She keeps up the premise that she’s still on her solo road trip to everyone but her best friend, and spends the commission money on redecorating her basic hotel room instead, while trying to convince the window-washing man to have an affair with her.
It is a chaotic, sexually explicit, laugh-out-loud funny book that was hailed by The New York Times as ‘the first great perimenopausal novel.’ It looks at how so much of being a woman is based on good behaviour – as a daughter, then as a wife, as a mother – and what happens when the energy to maintain that good behaviour starts to run out.
A network of older women helps buffer the protagonist through her journey towards the estrogen cliff, and after months of panic that her time to enjoy herself is running out, one of the most moving parts of the book comes right at the end, when she asks both her doctor and her friends what the best thing about post-menopausal life is and is inundated with wonderful, joyous answers.
“What’s the best thing about being postmenopausal?”
“Best?”
“Yeah?” Maybe there was no best.
“Hmm, let’s see… well, a woman’s mental health postmenopause is usually better than it’s been at any other time in the life of that particular woman, other than maybe childhood.
What.
“Is that really true? Is that because our periods stop?”
“Mm, it’s more like we aren’t cycling anymore between estrogen and progesterone and FSH. And, of course, in a patriarchy, your body is technically not your own until you pass the reproductive age.”
The author, Miranda July, credits three different menopause doctors and a group of real-life friends for helping construct this part of the book, to highlight how it’s a time of life that is wild and ultimately freeing, rather than bad.
Honestly, if you’re someone who worries that getting older might be boring, there are so many scenes that take place inside that hotel room that will truly change your mind.
Sandwich by Catherine Newman
If the previous book is about approaching the estrogen cliff of perimenopause, Sandwich takes place at the bottom of it – in good ways, and in wincing ways. Catherine Newman is a warm, funny writer who excels in dark humour – her previous novel, We All Want Impossible Things, took place in a hospice when a best friend basically moves in with her terminally ill best friend, for the final few months of her life. It was heart-breaking and very, very funny – gallows’ humour at its best.
And now she has turned that same voice onto the subject of perimenopause. Sandwich takes place over a one-week summer vacation, where Rocky, her husband and their two adult children, and her ageing parents all arrive in their rented bach for their yearly holiday.
Rocky is in her early 50s and in the hot flash, insanely violent periods, hold-on-for-dear-life mood swings part of perimenopause where she simultaneously has never loved her husband more but also maybe might divorce him???, depending on what her mood is doing that hour.
There is a lot of rage, a lot of weeping, and so much love – for her children, even if she can’t quite believe they’re not toddlers anymore, for her ageing parents, for her life. Everything is overwhelming and heightened, and there’s a real sense for Rocky of being in the last days of a golden period of life; not just of the summer holidays, but the knowledge that sick or dying parents are around the corner, at the same time as she helps her children get through early adult life. The sandwich generation are used to being squeezed from both sides and Sandwich is a no-holds barred look at the beauty and also brutality of that high-pressure life stage.
Catherine’s descriptions of menopause are definitely not for the faint-hearted – read her piece Welcome To Your Cronehood to get an idea of it – but if you’re in the thick of it, you’ll appreciate her fearless humour.
I’m Mostly Here To Enjoy Myself By Glynnis MacNicol
In comparison to these two novels, I’m Mostly Here To Enjoy Myself can – on the surface – appear to be more of a frothy fairytale of a memoir, as the author heads to Paris after a year of solo living in the pandemic and embarks on six weeks of pleasure: sex, cheese, long lunches with female friends. But author Glynnis MacNicol has written two books on what it is like to be single and childless in your 40s, in a society that still views marriage-and-a-baby as the inevitable (and only) happy ending for all women.
When Glynnis arrives in Paris, she’s 47 and has been living in New York for decades, and her age weighs more heavily on her. But when she gets to Paris and joins online dating, she is surprised to learn how little it matters – everybody wants her. A woman dating her way around the city is honestly a very fun romp to read, but the book also takes a wider look at how hard-won freedom is for females and how little value is still placed on the lives and accomplishments of women, outside of motherhood.
Have you got a perimenopause centered fiction book you’d like to recommend? Please email us at hello@capsulenz.com
