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kathryn_mcb's review
I was so excited to read this but I felt that even at about 30% in I wasn’t getting anything from it. Sorry.
scribepub's review against another edition
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
Emotionally honest.
Tom Gatti, New Statesman
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 The Big Necessity
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.
Amy Jenkins, Author of Honeymoon and Creator of This Life
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 Kith
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.
Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller
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
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.
FIT
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.
Melissa Benn, The Guardian
A candid look at what it means to be 50 today … Warm, wise and beautifully written.
Good Housekeeping
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.
Saturday Age
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.
The Jewish Chronicle
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.
Irish Examiner
Benjamin combines personal experience with more objective scientific and historical accounts of ageing … Elegantly written.
Prospect
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
Benjamin takes us into her inner world — it’s instructive, and very moving.
William Leith, Evening Standard
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
Emotionally honest.
Tom Gatti, New Statesman
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 The Big Necessity
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.
Amy Jenkins, Author of Honeymoon and Creator of This Life
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 Kith
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.
Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller
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
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.
FIT
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.
Melissa Benn, The Guardian
A candid look at what it means to be 50 today … Warm, wise and beautifully written.
Good Housekeeping
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.
Saturday Age
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.
The Jewish Chronicle
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.
Irish Examiner
Benjamin combines personal experience with more objective scientific and historical accounts of ageing … Elegantly written.
Prospect
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
Benjamin takes us into her inner world — it’s instructive, and very moving.
William Leith, Evening Standard
brona's review
2.0
Suddenly finding yourself experiencing perimenopausal symptoms and not knowing what to do with them can be rather startling if not frightening at times.
Considering how much medical knowledge we have about pretty much every other aspect of our physical lives, I am surprised by how much myth and mystery still surrounds menopause and it's various stages.
Fortunately, the baby boomers have never done anything quietly or on the sly, which is good for us Gen X-er's that follow along. As the boomers have hit each stage of life, they have brought it kicking and screaming into the public eye, thrown money at it and done everything possible to conquer it, fix it or normalise it.
Books like The Middlepause are popping up everywhere as boomer women embrace menopause and want everyone to know about it.
Personal stories about individual experiences are an important part of the normalisation process - they help us to see that everyone has their own story, their own way of going through menopause and that they are all perfectly valid. Menopause is not a prescribed process with specific signs and symptoms that everyone follows. Every woman's experience will be different and that is normal.
Full review here - http://bronasbooks.blogspot.com.au/2016/10/the-middlepause-on-turning-50-by-marina.html
Considering how much medical knowledge we have about pretty much every other aspect of our physical lives, I am surprised by how much myth and mystery still surrounds menopause and it's various stages.
Fortunately, the baby boomers have never done anything quietly or on the sly, which is good for us Gen X-er's that follow along. As the boomers have hit each stage of life, they have brought it kicking and screaming into the public eye, thrown money at it and done everything possible to conquer it, fix it or normalise it.
Books like The Middlepause are popping up everywhere as boomer women embrace menopause and want everyone to know about it.
Personal stories about individual experiences are an important part of the normalisation process - they help us to see that everyone has their own story, their own way of going through menopause and that they are all perfectly valid. Menopause is not a prescribed process with specific signs and symptoms that everyone follows. Every woman's experience will be different and that is normal.
Full review here - http://bronasbooks.blogspot.com.au/2016/10/the-middlepause-on-turning-50-by-marina.html
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