Midlife female longing is having a cultural moment ∞
I wrote this culture feature for New Humanist magazine meditating on longing, yearning and desire and why midlife women are in the spotlight.
It was a joy to chat with authors Erin Somers and Sophie Mackintosh, whilst exploring their novels The Ten Year Affair and Permanence. We discussed the wildness of our inner worlds, the role of fantasy in our lives and the bravery of Miranda July’s All Fours.
One book that didn’t make it into this article was Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin, which I also loved. It’s set around a Paris apartment, with two women of different generations grappling with infidelity. One woman having an affair doubts whether what she’s doing is unethical, writing, “Maybe the problem is the word. Infidelity. I never noticed before but it makes you an infidel, believing in the wrong god. But really it’s another kind of fidelity – to yourself, to your dream of yourself, to the other people you love.”