Older Female Protagonists Finally! These Midlife Characters Are a Novel Revolution

A few years ago, a writer friend repeated a confession made by her agent, “I couldn’t sell a novel about a woman over fifty if it came with a blow job.” Very unscientific proof that it’s not your imagination that until very recently there’s been a dearth of fiction featuring strong female characters in midlife—the preferred euphemism for “older.” Like the token female in male-dominated professions, publishing seems to permit one Olive Kitteridge (2009) per decade, then it’s back to churning out books about comely young heroines yearning for true love, a baby, meaningful work, or framing their husbands for murder.

Two new books showcasing—it must be said—privileged midlife womanhood have come down the pike, each with very different takes about what it means to a woman in the peak of her health, wealth, and wisdom, old enough to have dispensed with Hallmark happily ever afters, women in full.