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’s most recent books are Insomnia, The Middlepause, Rocket Dreams, shortlisted for the Eugene Emme Award, and Last Days in Babylon, longlisted for the Wingate Prize. Her writing has appeared in Granta, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Paris Review, and the digital magazines Literary Hub and Aeon, where she is a senior editor. She lives in London.
Review :
'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.’
‘Emotionally honest.’
‘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.’
‘We are not supposed to beguile, we the middle-aged women. But with The Middlepause, Marina Benjamin does that: she beguiles and entrances with a lyrical, thoughtful, erudite, and always lucid exploration of the middle years of her life, and what they mean to her, and what middle-aged women mean to society.’
‘Beautifully written and so thoughtful, The Middlepause made me think about fleeting time and what is important to me. I couldn’t put it down.’
‘Intimate, open-hearted, clever and kind, this book is a companion which, by naming the shadow fears, finds the truer gold.’
‘A candid and beautifully written “wrinkles and all” meditation on the middle years with all their dilemmas and challenges … [Marina Benjamin] seeks a new vision of how to be middle-aged happily and harmoniously without sentiment or delusion.’
‘Beautifully composed and intensely sympathetic, The Middlepause: On Turning Fifty is wry, personal and intimate, while still being something of a road map for others.’
‘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. An essential companion for women who want to journey forward with grace and confidence.’
‘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.’
‘A 21st-century meditation on middle age … The Middlepause is erudite, with a lengthy list of notes and ideas for further reading, but it is also personal – part memoir, part unflinching travelogue through the unsettling physical and mental challenges of the menopause … Honest and uplifting.’
‘Lucid and sophisticated … A restrained but wonderful guide to the convulsive changes of 50 and over … This is a book that yields valuable insights on almost every page.’
‘Benjamin takes us into her inner world — it’s instructive, and very moving.’
‘A candid look at what it means to be 50 today … Warm, wise and beautifully written.’
‘Benjamin has conjured something philosophically poised and poetic from an unlikely subject, as much about the sanctuary of place and coming to terms with time, seasons and life’s cycles, and all rendered with clarity and calm.’
‘An honest mid-life reflection … In this elegantly written, extended essay, [Marina Benjamin] explores what it means to have lived for half-a-century, and contemplates what may be left in perhaps another half-century.’
‘A personal meditation on the losses and gains of facing the middle years … [Marina Benjamin] offers hope and heart to others facing the same life transition.’
‘Benjamin combines personal experience with more objective scientific and historical accounts of ageing … Elegantly written.’
‘This is a measured and beautifully written critique of menopause and middle age that pre-, mid-, and postmenopausal women will find eminently relatable, and that those who love and care for them will likewise appreciate.’
‘Full of insight.’
‘In The Middlepause Benjamin deftly and brilliantly examines the losses and unexpected gains she experienced in menopause. Menopause is a mind and body shift as monumental and universal as puberty, yet far less often discussed, especially in public, which is what makes Benjamin’s work here so urgently necessary.’
‘Benjamin takes the process of self–help thoughtfully. For starters, to recognise change, rather than deny it, is to begin to deal with it.’
‘This gentle but honest book should be standard reading for friends and loved–ones of women trying to make sense of this transitional stage in life.’
‘The Middlepause isn't some deluding self–help book that insists middle–age is a time of great growth for us all. It’s an accurate and thoughtful assessment of the credit and debit sheet, and it remains emotionally genuine throughout … This is a thoughtful, compassionate and wise book.’
