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Tatler Asia
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Tatler Asia
7 honest books on ageing that are good for the soul
2. 'This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage' by Ann Patchett Above 'This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage' (Photo: Bloomsbury Paperbacks) Though this isn't a book on ageing, the undercurrent of time's passage runs through every essay. Ann Patchett brings a novelist's discipline to nonfiction: her sentences are crisp, her stories layered. She writes about the long arc of friendship, the slow-building nature of creative work and what it means to live alone by choice. Her reflections are rarely framed as epiphanies; instead, they unfold gradually, shaped by age, habit and hard-won self-knowledge. For readers seeking quiet insight rather than dramatic reinvention, this collection offers exactly that. 3. 'No Time To Spare' by Ursula K Le Guin Above 'No Time To Spare' (Photo: Mariner Books) Ursula K Le Guin, best known for her speculative fiction, turned her sharp gaze inward in her final years, publishing essays that read like conversations with a brilliant, slightly irritable aunt. She writes about cats, breakfast and the arrogance of youth—subjects that seem small but reveal her larger argument: that old age is not a diminishing, but a different kind of richness. Her tone is brisk and occasionally cranky, especially when addressing ageism or internet culture. Among books on ageing, this one is notable for resisting both complaint and inspiration; Le Guin is simply living, and thinking, out loud. 4. 'A Life's Work' by Rachel Cusk Above 'A Life's Work' (Photo: Picador Paper) Ostensibly a book about early motherhood, A Life's Work is in fact a study of identity breakdown—a theme that mirrors the emotional terrain of ageing. Rachel Cusk interrogates the body's mutiny, the evaporation of former selves and the awkward collisions between expectation and reality. Her prose is spare and confrontational, stripped of the usual maternal glow. What makes it relevant to ageing is its unsentimental treatment of transformation: the sense of becoming unrecognisable to oneself. If you're looking for a book that insists on intellectual and emotional honesty, even when it's uncomfortable, Cusk delivers. 5. 'This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism' by Ashton Applewhite Above 'This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism' (Photo: Celadon Books) Ashton Applewhite isn't interested in gently guiding readers into acceptance, but in dismantling the entire system of cultural ageism. Backed by research and fuelled by righteous irritation, her book calls out the ways society marginalises older people, especially women. She tackles everything from workplace discrimination to the cult of youth in media with sharp wit and unflinching analysis. Unlike many books about ageing that focus on coping strategies, this one demands structural change. It's energising, at times confrontational, and deeply clarifying—particularly for readers tired of being told to age 'gracefully'. 6. 'Late Migrations' by Margaret Renkl Above 'Late Migrations' (Photo: Milkweed Editions) Margaret Renkl, a columnist for The New York Times , blends personal essays with observations from the natural world in this quiet but resonant book on ageing. She writes about the deaths of her parents, the slow rhythm of her Southern backyard and the brief but meaningful rituals of family life. There is a calm attentiveness to her voice, even when describing loss. The book doesn't offer solutions, just presence. Its approach to ageing is reflective rather than corrective—Renkl lets the reader sit with time, rather than race against it. Among books on ageing, this one stands out for its stillness. 7. 'The Year of Magical Thinking' by Joan Didion Above 'The Year of Magical Thinking' (Photo: Vintage) A clinical, unsparing portrait of grief, this book is often shelved under 'bereavement', but it also speaks profoundly to ageing's disorienting effects. Didion documents the year after her husband's sudden death with the precision of a surgeon. She tracks her irrational thinking, her physical exhaustion and the ways time can warp under trauma. There's no comfort here, no platitude—just the cold light of loss. What it offers is not catharsis but clarity. For anyone facing ageing as a series of absences—of people, of faculties, of certainty—Joan Didion's account feels devastatingly accurate.
The Guardian
16-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Maternity Service by Emma Barnett review – a tour of duty in early motherhood
'It's a bloody weird experience, maternity leave, and it's OK to acknowledge that,' Emma Barnett writes in Maternity Service, her short, no-nonsense guide to surviving this curious – and relatively recent – phenomenon that can feel, in the thick of it, like a temporary exile from the outside world. For many new mothers, the abrupt severance from their professional lives and previous identities can leave them flailing in a strange and destabilising limbo where it seems almost taboo to voice any feelings of dislocation, in case these come across as a lack of maternal devotion. Barnett proposes that the whole business should be rebranded – rather than 'maternity leave', which suggests a nice relaxing break, it should be styled 'maternity service', with all the latter term's connotations of a military tour of duty. Words such as 'duty' and 'service' are unfashionable these days, she says, but it can help to reframe this strange, formless, sleep-deprived time as a finite period in which you are performing a series of tasks in the service of keeping your newborn alive. There are echoes here of Claire Kilroy's brutally honest novel of early motherhood, Soldier Sailor, in which the narrator is the soldier of the title; Barnett mentions that she and a new mother comrade still greet each oother as 'soldier'. This may sound rather a grim and brutal depiction of what is widely supposed to be a joyful time, but Barnett's mission is to separate maternity leave as an experience from the new mother's feelings about her baby. Even when the child is adored and longed-for (both Barnett's children were born after gruelling rounds of IVF), these early months can leave women feeling cut off from the wider world, their partner and their former selves, and her aim is to offer ways to navigate this rupture. By her own admission, she is not the first writer to attempt a warts-and-all rendition of the physical and psychological demands of this life-stage. Over the past decade or so, an increasing number of women have articulated, in fiction and memoir, the ambivalence, drudgery and isolation that attend new motherhood and were once considered unsayable. For this freedom to be candid, Barnett says, 'we owe a debt to those who initially transgressed and sometimes paid a price for it. First mention goes to the important writing of Rachel Cusk, starting with her searing A Life's Work.' If Barnett's book lacks the poetry of Cusk's 2001 memoir (my life raft during my own maternity leave, 23 years ago), it is written with a different purpose: less a literary and philosophical inquiry into the inequalities and conflicting emotions inherent in motherhood, and more of a practical how-to guide. Barnett explains that she is writing in real time, during her second tour of duty – thoughts jotted down in snatched moments between feeds or while her infant daughter naps. In an encouragingly breezy tone, she offers advice on how to adopt a practical uniform or build a semblance of a daily routine, as well as the importance of connecting with other 'sisters-in-arms' and being honest when you are struggling, to relieve one another of the pressure to look as if everything is under control. This frankness is also essential for future generations of mothers, she explains: 'And when they do ask us, the women who have gone before them, for an honest account of maternity leave and beyond, we struggle to explain it. We partly gloss over the truth out of loyalty to and love of our own beautiful babies.' There are, inevitably, limits to the applicability of these lessons. Barnett is careful to check her privilege at every step, but she is writing principally for women from a similar demographic to her own – middle-class professionals, who find their work stimulating (more so than wiping up poo, anyway) and who miss their autonomy and the previous sense of equality in their relationship. These caveats aside, Barnett is a sympathetic and cheerful companion, and in writing this book she has provided valuable dispatches from the front line, the better to enable a more honest transmission of hard-won wisdom to her own daughter and all the mothers yet to embark on this bloody weird journey. Maternity Service: A Love Letter to Mothers from the Front Line of Maternity Leave by Emma Barnett is published by Fig Tree (£12.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
