Review: Jenny Éclair’s “Older & Wider: A Survivor’s Guide to the Menopause”

This week I want to share one of the most hilarious books I’ve read in ages… the author, Jenny Éclair – an award-winning comedian, novelist and actress – brings her wit, empathy and personal experience in this ode to menopausal women.  

Older & Wider: A Survivor’s Guide to the Menopause is for all of you that are peri-menopausal, living through menopause, or have come out the other side. It’s filled with human truths you’ll definitely relate to. It’s honest and totally uplifting. As we face the realities of mood-swings (murderous anger to sniveling fear and anxiety), hot flushes, memory loss, an expanding waistline and the gamut of health issues and symptoms menopause presents, we need to realise that we’re not alone.

I’m totally envious of anyone that gets to play a “Grumpy Old Women”, and who writes prose like Jenny Éclair! The fact that she’s writing and sharing about her experience of menopause is to be celebrated. As she says, “the menopause is not a full stop. Life goes on.”

The more people talk about menopause, the better it is for us all. Oprah Winfrey describes it as an opportunity, not a life sentence. She, so aptly says, “you may also make a significant discovery—something grand and important. You might even call it the discovery of a lifetime: that menopause, far from being the tragic end of the best part of a woman’s existence, can actually be a threshold, a gateway, the passage to the you you’ve been waiting your whole life to become”.

Éclair’s book delves into the darkness and delightful self-discovery that comes with menopause so well, I just couldn’t put the book down!

So, here’s to embracing menopause as our time – The time we get to accept and embrace and come to terms with who we really are. If you feel the need to laugh out loud this weekend, Older & Wider will do the trick!

Buy “Older & Wider: A Survivor’s Guide to the Menopause” here, on Amazon.