The Middlepause: on turning fifty

(Paperback)

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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.

Reviews

'This tender and thoughtful book calls for an "invisible revolution" in our attitudes to women's ageing. In a deeply personal meditation Benjamin places body knowledge and luck alongside grieving and family history; intimate reflection with literary exemplar; communion with ghosts sadly close to the painful real. The Middlepause is a wise, lucid and beautiful plea for more candid discussion of the time-wrought transformations of the female body.' - Gail Jones, author of A Guide to Berlin;'Both a deeply personal reflection and an elegantly philosophical navigation of the transitions, changes, and challenges of growing older, The Middlepause is written with candour and cosmopolitan wisdom. Benjamin draws on a wide variety of sources from life and literature to illuminate her own experience and amplify its impact, making this book an essential companion for women who want to journey forward with grace and confidence.' - Caroline Baum, Booktopia;'Women do a lot of things to mark turning fifty. Go to a resort! Have a bang-up party! Far, far better: read The Middlepause.' - Jill Lepore, author of The Secret History of Wonder Woman;'Deeply moving and gorgeously written ... Marina Benjamin leads us on a journey into the heart of age-ist darkness, then upwards into a light of self-understanding as she faces that most difficult of all challenges - not death but getting old.' - Margaret Wertheim, author of Pythagoras' Trousers

Author Bio

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.