A forty-five-year-old artist abandons a planned cross-country drive from Los Angeles to New York, instead checking into a nondescript motel just thirty miles from her home. She spends weeks documenting her fixation on a young man who works at a local car rental agency, eventually paying him to help her redecorate her room. The narrative details her physical experience of perimenopause, the anatomical shifts of middle age, and the reorganization of her long-term marriage as she pursues a different configuration of intimacy and sexual autonomy.
This book serves readers navigating the neurological and social changes of midlife who want a clinical yet surreal look at domestic dissatisfaction. It appeals to those interested in how aesthetic obsession replaces traditional romantic scripts. Readers finish with a specific vocabulary for the hormonal transition into later adulthood and a framework for negotiating the borders between family stability and individual desire. It provides an unfiltered record of how a person might dismantle their existing identity without physically leaving their life.
Deep, inward-looking, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Wisdom Collector. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 2024
- Language
- EN
