cover image Thank You, Your Opinion Means Nothing to Me: A Year of Hot Flashes, Flashbacks, and Finding My Voice

Thank You, Your Opinion Means Nothing to Me: A Year of Hot Flashes, Flashbacks, and Finding My Voice

Nancy Blair. ThorsonsElement, $24.95 (249pp) ISBN 978-0-00-716050-1

As she turns 50 and enters menopause, Florida writer and glass artist Blair begins a journal to chart her physical and emotional transformations. There are tedious complaints about hot flashes, sleepless nights and weight gain--a kvetch-fest thankfully relieved by Blair's descriptions of family life. She adores her husband, a kindred artist:""We are mystic misfits, married to the same visual path and passion."" Although they have no children, Blair is the primary caretaker for her aging mother--and, for a time, for her stepfather, too. If you haven't guessed by now, this is not your mother's menopause. Blair's tone is both brazen and New Age, and readers will either delight in or despair of sentences that begin:""10:43 am Farted my way through yoga class and fell asleep during final relaxation.... Woke up thinking I miss my red friend, my Moon Time, my flowers, Auntie Flo."" The journal's funniest and richest parts come when Blair compares her life as a teenager in the late '60s and early '70s with her current lifestyle. When she can't remember where she parked her car, she wonders if it's part of aging or an acid flashback brought on by rereading the '60s classic Be Here Now. The work's journal format is limiting--this might have worked better as a narrative memoir. Still, baby boomers will relate.