New Passages: Mapping Your Life Across Time - Hardcover

Sheehy, Gail

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394589130 ISBN 13: 9780394589138

Publisher: Random House, 1995

Synopsis

A provocative sequel to and a significant extension of Sheehy's international bestseller Passages. Sheehy finds a revolution in the adult life cycle as she traces not only radical changes in the earlier phases of the '20s, '30s, and '40s, but discovers and maps out the new frontier--a second adulthood in middle life.

About this title

About the Author:

Gail Sheehy is contributing editor to Vanity Fair.

From Booklist:

Sheehy's Passages (1976), in which she counseled thirtysomethings about the onset of midlife, went straight to the top of most best-seller lists, and her last book, The Silent Passage (1992), in which she schlepped women through menopause, did almost as well, despite the fact that females had been navigating the change of life for a millennium or so without Sheehy's help. Rapidly running out of passages, Sheehy now takes the obvious next step: edging her loyal readers, now entrenched in midlife, to the precipice and helping them face their mortality. Arguing that middle life is the "most unrevealed portion of adult life" (not once the Boomers dig in), Sheehy is here to tell you that the years from 45 to 65 are "not the stagnant, depressing downward slide we have always assumed they would be." Although she intends this book to be a "gift" to her anxious readers, it mostly fails. Before hearing about middle age's upside, we must wend our way through seemingly endless pages about women losing their spouses, men losing their jobs (to say nothing of their hair), and both men and women contracting enough diseases to make even the hardiest souls hurry in for a checkup. There is some good news. Women who make it to 65 can expect to live to 85, and if they've survived divorce or widowhood in midlife, they come to enjoy their own independence. Still, the overriding sense of this book, whether Sheehy admits it or not, is that everybody gets hit, everybody gets hurt. You don't need passage counseling to know that, and if you don't have the inner strength to endure, you might not even get to enjoy those upbeat nuggets Sheehy has gleaned from her surveys. Expect the usual demand; for whatever reason, this passage gambit sells Ilene Cooper

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0394589130
• ISBN 13: 9780394589138
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 498