Still Sexy After All These Years? The 9 Unspoken Truths About Women's Desire Beyond 50

Kliger, a health care educator, and Nedelman, a clinical psychologist, believe women shouldn't be "pigeonholed" by old wives' tales that tell us desire dies on your 50th birthday. But instead of bolstering that idea, their book consists of a grating overdose of stories about real women, many of which serve to validate the opposite truth. The fact that the title ends with a question mark is telling; the book is confusing and disjointed, the "truths" are often obvious ("sexy is different after 50"; "less can be more after 50"), and the anecdotes meld into a long string of irrelevant stories. Many are like the following ambivalent dispatch from Tisha, "a vibrant, well-educated Latina professional in her late 50s." After getting divorced, Tisha thought she lacked "any desire, any libido, or that I was desirable to anybody else... [but] that feeling... goes up and down." A chapter on overcoming the physical problems of aging as they relate to sex, and a look at women who didn't consider having same-sex relationships until after age 50 are interesting, but this eye-opening information isn't enough to save a book that hopelessly flounders to find its point, without a solution or even an enlightening conclusion.