The Change: Women, Aging and the Menopause - Softcover

Greer, Germaine

3.65

182 ratings by Goodreads

9780449908532: The Change: Women, Aging and the Menopause

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0449908534 ISBN 13: 9780449908532

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1993

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"A brilliant, gutsy, exhilarating, exasperating fury of a book."
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
In this compulsively readable, fascinating account of menopause, renowned feminist and author Germaine Greer gives us so much more than the medical facts. She has gone back into history, read textbooks, explored novels and poems, and has written a wholly extraordinary account of women and their changes in life.

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About the Author:

Germaine Greer's books include The Female Eunuch; The Obstacle Race; Sex and Destiny; The Madwoman's Underclothes; Daddy, We Hardly Knew You; The Change; and Slip-Shod Sibyls. She has had a distinguished career in academia, including as professor of English and comparative literary studies at Warwick University, England.

From Library Journal:

Greer ( The Female Eunuch , LJ 4/14/71; Daddy, We Hardly Knew You , LJ 1/90) turns the clear light of her ferocious intelligence on what she calls "the undescribed experience," the female climacteric--menopause. She has read everything : medical treatises, herbaries, historical letters, the few literary works that treat this universal aspect of female experience. At last, she says, women get to decide: Whether they wish to spend the second half of their lives in a ghastly re-creation of culturally approved youth, or whether menopause "marks the end of apologizing" and the beginning of a search for deep joy for and in oneself. She notes that the pitifully small amount of research done does not yet indicate the real causes for menopausal distress such as hot flashes, nor does it untangle the symptoms of plain aging from the cessation of monthly periods. She decries the lack of role models for the aging woman but does find us a few: the courtesan Ninon de Lenclos, whose intelligence charmed male and female alike into her advanced age; Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), who wielded her old woman's power into lapidary prose; Jane Digby El Mezrab, who at 47 enchanted a sheik, who rode by her side for 30 more years. Not the least of models is Greer herself, whose fine and hard-edged voice makes life after the cessation of childbearing sound, if difficult and harrowing, also joyful and rich in reward. Far superior to Gail Sheehy's The Silent Passage ( LJ 4/1/92), this is highly recommended for all collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/92.
- GraceAnne A. DeCandido, "School Library Journal"
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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