The Oldest We've Ever Been: Seven True Stories of Midlife Transitions

A professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Lavin gathers seven personal essays by writers, artists and activists that probe divorce, remarriage, friendship, parenthood, illness and death as they celebrate the richness of midlife experience. William Davies King opens up about his painful divorce and his effort to understand how his bizarre habit of collecting tuna-fish can labels and cereal boxes speaks to both his self-hatred and creativity. Kim Larsen relates how middle age was the end of the road for an opinionated and prickly friend who lost first her tongue and then her life to cancer at 46. Giving hope to even the most jaded, Lavin and Locke Bowman tell how they revived a college romance into an e-mail love affair and then a marriage 22 years after first breaking up. Peggy Shinner goes to her accountant because he reminds her of her late, rough-edged, self-made Jewish father; and self-mutilating, sexually precocious teenager Alice puts mom Ellen McMahon through the wringer. Although most of the essays suffer from long-windedness and affectation, the sentiments expressed are genuine, moving and brave—and will be eminently recognizable to baby boomers. (Mar. 13)