The big M 13 writers take back the story of menopause

Novelist and memoirist Yuknavitch (Reading the Waves) presents moving essays on the many shades of menopause from a blockbuster lineup of writers, including Julia Alvarez, Roxane Gay, and Cheryl Strayed. The pieces highlight the secrecy and shame typically associated with the end of one's reproductive years, position the biological transition as a rite of passage that signals a new stage of life, and critique the pressure put on women to keep the signs of aging at bay. Strayed delivers a meditation on living longer than her mother, who died at 45, reflecting that, throughout the hot flashes, brain fog, and insomnia brought on by perimenopause, "I never forgot my luck. What a gift it was, to simply be there." In "Finding Meno: Little Clowns," Monica Drake juxtaposes the indignities of divorce court with the discomforts of menopausal symptoms to illustrate how patriarchal systems cause women to loathe their bodies and themselves. Yuknavitch caps off the collection with "Transmogrify," in which she compares aging to the magical transformations that happen to characters in fairy tales, encouraging readers to view menopause as a "portal" to a place where "we can be anything." These penetrating and lyrical reflections bring serious cultural analysis to a historically taboo subject. Readers experiencing menopause will find solidarity and hope. (Jan.)

Writers confront their experiences of menopause and its aftermath. Novelist and memoirist Yuknavitch here collects 13 personal essays, including one of her own, representing women at various stages of life, from different cultures, and with a range of feelings about hot flashes, mood swings, and the fact that, as Pam Houston sardonically notes, "Post-menopause, like it or not, deathis the next big thing." In the lively "She-Dandy," Darcey Steinke considers menopause in other species, like the killer whale pod led by a postmenopausal female that strikes the author as "otherly, smelly, powerful, ridiculously awake." Several of the essays make it clear that the story of menopause is inevitably tangled up in the stories of life as a whole. It's an easy transition for Monica Drake--up to the time when her husband leaves her in a messy divorce, and the symptoms of menopause mix inextricably with feelings of rage and sorrow. Some of the best essays provide a view from the other side of menopause. Julia Alvarez sensitively finds her way by reaching out for "stories to steer by" and looks to older women as "muses to help me get wherever I was going." Yuknavitch's concluding essay nests her own wrenching experience of menopause into an extended footnote inside an uplifting meditation about the possibilities of change, in which she tells her readers that "you are not alone, but you are going to have to conjure your own story." Not so much a map as an invitation to explore fearlessly one's own unique experience, the book provides a chorus of generally calm, comforting, and often surprisingly humorous voices. Engagingly personal tales of an underreported stage of life. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.