The Stranger in the Mirror: A Memoir of Middle Age by Jane Shilling...

I looked in the mirror one morning, and saw the face of a stranger. Who was she, this haggard, bun-faced woman with the softening jawline, the downturned mouth, the world-weary air of a woman who hasn t had what she wanted from life, and knows she isn t going to get it now? Why, it was no one else but me, myself and I. Middle age took Jane Shilling by surprise. She hadn t seen it coming, and she certainly wasn t ready for it. She lives in a tumbledown urban cottage by the Thames, with a son, a cat and a horse in a livery 50 miles away a flawed, bittersweet version of the idyll she dreamed of in her 20s. And yet she can t help feeling that there is one last great adventure still to be grabbed. Why is her sense of hope and excitement so at odds with her contemporaries resolute denial or rueful resignation in the face of middle age? And what of the strange, conflicting attitudes a mixture of fascination and revulsion that surround the public perception of middle-aged women? This is one .