Booklist Reviews
After taking a break to analyze the effects of 9/11 on a community in New Jersey in Middletown, America (2003), best-selling journalist Sheehy returns to her Passages (1976) gambit. Here she examines the ways women--and some men--ages 45 and over are approaching sex, love, romance, and marriage. Labeling this stage in life a "second adulthood," Sheehy notes that it is marked by an intense desire to exert greater mastery over one's health, emotions, and vocation. Using her own research and drawing on survey responses, Sheehy examines how older women are coping and classifies her respondents as healthy "passionates" and "seekers," frustrated married women, those resigned to the status quo, and those suffering from lowered libidos. The heart of the book consists of lengthy interviews with seasoned women who talk candidly about younger lovers, online dating, sex-toy parties, bisexuality, divorce, long-term marriages that have been reinvented, and finding a new love late in life. Sheehy sometimes seems stuck in the gee-whiz school of journalism (Women over 50 are interested in sex! Divorce is painful!). And her compressed style may give some readers whiplash ("In the last year Sue's house was repossessed and she was diagnosed as bipolar"). Still, she presents a hot cultural topic in an accessible, highly readable book that will have great appeal for her core audience. ((Reviewed November 15, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.
Library Journal Reviews
New Passages for women over 50, who aren't ready to give up on sex. With a four-city tour. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal Reviews
Sheehy's stages of sexual and romantic maturity in the tradition of her earlier well-known works (e.g., Passages , The Silent Passage, Understanding Men's Passages ) probably occur far more flexibly than she describes, and her approach based on web questionnaires, interviews, and discussion groups claims indicative rather than statistical validity. Nonetheless, her sympathetic descriptions and recommendations culled from mature women about navigating the challenges of aging toward becoming a “seasoned siren” give this book real value. Her coverage of vaginal atrophy stands out--few books seem to address this common cause of pain associated with sex for older women. Many of her stories focus on the rich, megarich, and even the rich and famous. Yet Sheehy made an effort to include middle-American, minimum-wage, and Bible-belt women, whose solutions to aging and loneliness are sometimes more creative than those of the well-heeled cognoscenti and illuminati of the East and West coasts. For all collections.
[Page 94]. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
Sheehy, a self-described seasoned woman, set off in search of others like herself. Her premise? There's "a new universe of lusty, liberated women, some married and some not, who are unwilling to settle for the stereotypical roles of middle age." Aside from the question whether the 200-odd women she contacts constitute a representative universe, her claim is hardly revelatory. Older women (especially Europeans) have known from time immemorial that age has nothing to do with desire and an urge to live passionately. What makes a difference these days is the opportunities afforded by online dating sites. Short on research, Sheehy, best known for Passages, makes do by stringing together colorful stories of the women she interviews, drawing inflated conclusions from their lives and claiming it all as part of yet another passage (will it ever end?) to Second Adulthood, with phases like "the Romantic Passage" and "Soul Seeking." The book's most chilling bit of information: you really do lose it if you don't use it. But take heart, ladies; Sheehy provides the name of a doctor who employs a nonsurgical method of rejuvenating the vagina, making it just as pink and open as it was when you were... that's right, young. (On sale Jan. 10)
[Page 40]. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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