About the Book
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. --Kate Tuttle, The Los Angeles Times
The Middlepause offers a vision of contentment in middle age, without sentiment or delusion. Marina Benjamin weighs the losses and opportunities of our middle years, taking inspiration from literature, science, philosophy, and her own experience. Spurred by her surgical propulsion into a sudden menopause, she finds ways to move forward while maintaining clear-eyed acknowledgment of the challenges of aging. Attending to complicated elderly parents and a teenaged daughter, experiencing bereavement, her own health woes, and a fresh impetus to give, Benjamin emerges into a new definition of herself as daughter, mother, citizen, and woman.
Among The Middlepause's many wise observations about no longer being young: I am discovering that I care less about what other people think. My needs are leaner and my storehouse fuller. It is not possible to fully appreciate what it means to age without attending to what the body knows. . . . I have always had a knee-jerk distaste for the idea that age is all in the mind. You need a cohort of peers to go through the aging process with you. A cackle of crones! A cavalry! Marina Benjamin's memoir will serve as a comfort, a companion to women going through the too-seldom-spoken of physical and mental changes in middle age and beyond.
About the Author :
Marina Benjamin is the author of two previous memoirs, Rocket Dreams, short-listed for the Eugene Emme Award, and Last Days in Babylon, long-listed for the Wingate Prize. She has also worked as a journalist, her pieces appearing in The Guardian, the Financial Times, The Independent, and other British newspapers, and she has served 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 :
Praise for The Middlepause by Marina Benjamin
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.--Kate Tuttle, The Los Angeles Times
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, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of The Secret History of Wonder Woman
Eloquent and intelligent . . . 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. --Publishers Weekly, starred review
Piercingly intelligent and bracingly honest. --Barnes & Noble Review
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. --Rose George, author of Ninety Percent of Everything and The Big Necessity
Intimate, open-hearted, clever and kind, this book is a companion which, by naming the shadow fears, finds the truer gold. --Jay Griffiths, author of The Wild: An Elemental Journey
While The Middlepause is indeed intellectual and cultivated, Benjamin also speaks directly to a sense of communal, lived experience. . . . She writes so perceptively about the familiar that she effortlessly freshens and elevates it. --Isabel Berick, Financial Times
I loved this candid and beautifully written 'wrinkles and all' meditation on the middle years. --Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller, Editor's Choice
Benjamin takes the process of self-help thoughtfully. For starters, to recognise change, rather than deny it, is to begin to deal with it. --Iain Finlayson, Saga Magazine
For emotional honesty, look to a midlife memoir from Marina Benjamin. --Tom Gatti, The New Statesman, The books to look out for in 2016
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. --Sue Wright, The Malcontent
Lucid and sophisticated. . . . The Middlepause is 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. --Melissa Benn, The Guardian
In The Middlepause, Marina Benjamin takes a candid look at what it means to be 50 today. . . . It's warm, wise and beautifully written. --Good Housekeeping (UK)
This book does not contain advice on diet, yoga, emollients or wardrobe makeovers. Marina Benjamin instead pursues an intellectual perspective of her journey to 50. . . . As a means of inducting younger women into the business of getting older, this is a welcome narrative. --Deirdre Conroy, Irish Independent
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. --Shiny New Books
