Novels featuring older female characters enduring the joint horrors of ageism and misogyny have been around for a while. But fiction foregrounding the specifics of midlife hormonal changes is a surprisingly recent phenomenon.
Given the medical profiles of menopause (and its predecessor, perimenopause), perhaps it’s unsurprising that wellness guides and health-related memoirs have led the way.
Journalist Sam Baker’s pioneering The Shift, actor Naomi Watts’ Dare I Say It and Darcey Steinke’s Flash Count Diary combine personal experience with research. Handbooks like Liz Earle’s The Good Menopause Guide and Dr Mary Claire Havers’ series on perimenopause and menopause focus on disseminating facts.
Now that fiction is catching up, terms like “meno-lit” and “hot flush noir” are surfacing – just as “chick-lit” was once used to patronise commercial women’s fiction. Hopefully, the increasing visibility of menopausal protagonists will move past the novelty phase and become a mainstay of the novel. After all, the stages of menopause are a universal female experience. Surely, it’s time they were integrated into the wider realms of fiction.
Here are five novels tackling the early stages of menopause with fervour.
Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood
On a swelteringly hot day in London, 45-year-old Grace Adams is having a terrible time. Her husband has left her, taking their teenage daughter, Lotte, and she has lost both her part-time jobs after a spell of excessive sick leave and...