cover image Mid-Life: Notes from the Halfway Mark

Mid-Life: Notes from the Halfway Mark

Elizabeth Kaye. Addison Wesley Publishing Company, $18 (186pp) ISBN 978-0-201-40849-2

Freelance writer Kaye ends this essay about growing older on an upbeat note, stating that ``there is no sadness in thinking that once I was young and now I am not.'' However, most of these ruminations on a depression that overtook the author when she was 35 are permeated by sorrow at the prospect of growing older and dying. In fairly rapid succession, she experienced an abortion, the failure of a love affair and subsequently a marriage that ended in divorce. Only after the death of her grandmother did Kaye reconcile herself to her fading youth. Although her account is peppered with snide remarks about women who try plastic surgery in an attempt to stop time and men who desperately hold on to their youth by marrying younger women, she offers no insights into coping with aging beyond her strictly personal perspective. (Apr.)