I would need the fingers of both hands to count the women of my age (forty-nine) and slightly younger who, when I mentioned to them that I was reading The Change, dropped their eyes with a shudder and said, ‘Ugh—I don’t want to know about menopause. I don’t even want to think about it.* ‘No, no!’ I’d cry. ‘It’s not what you think! It’s wonderful! We’ll be free!’ Some laughed and turned away. Some hastily changed the subject. Some looked at me with sidelong, sceptical smiles. And one said, ‘Not now. Not yet. I’m in love. I’m getting on a plane next week to go and meet him’—as if she feared that menopause was like a fire-curtain in a theatre: boom, it drops, and overnight you are cut off forever from energy, light, risk-the place where things are burning. But The Change is full of energy, light and risk. The whole work is that rare thing in modern public discourse, a passionate argument for spirit. Its trajectory describes a beautiful curve through indignation, anger and grief, and out the other side to a vantage-point with a high, calm view towards death.
