What’s it about:

A book about being a ‘modern woman’ – including aging, caring, parenting, working, loving, feminisming… all the things.

What Lynn learned:

• I’ve been reading Moran’s work since I was a teenager being given The Times articles from my Dad ‘just in case this comes up in your Higher English exam’ and she’s still as readable.

• It’s okay to change your mind. Moran explores this in the topic of Botox which she wrote against in another book, ‘How to Be a Woman’. She writes about aging and getting Botox in this book, calling it, ‘the working woman’s facial mini-break. Botox just does your relaxing for you. It just takes a job off The List.’ (p. 186).

• Speaking of The List, I saw myself in Moran’s reference to the almighty list that women run their lives by. I thought I was alone in seeing The List as all powerful. Not so – ‘The List is the one constant in my life. In many ways, The List is my life.’ (p. 12.)

• We love through our noses. Our love-partners (is that a term?) have a scent which chemically relaxes us. You know, ‘The Good Smell’ (p. 35).

• Aging is to be feared and not feared. Feared as there are still so many issues facing women – such as value placed on youthfulness and beauty, caring demands and the day our wardrobes fail us. But also not feared as we need to role model that women are essential and awesome, ‘jolly and comfortable’ like clothing, throughout their decades.

·       If you really want to understand what it is like being the mother of a teenage daughter with an eating disorder, then this book definitely gives a powerful insight. From the menu plans and the NHS waiting times, the guilt and the lengthy road of recovery, Moran details the experience with emotion and power.

Fave quotes:

• ‘In unpaid care work, women carry 75% of the burden. It’s seen as low status and unskilled…. Women are born to care! Women have an excess of love, which they must vent, or else bursts! Women need to care!’ (p. 247)

• ‘If you want to know why we are raising an anxious, depressed, panicking generation who assume all the bad diversions of animals in psychological pain – self-harming, not eating – the answers to much of it might be here. We have charged them with saving the world.’ (p. 237)

• ‘undoing, is an astonishing trick to learn, as you get older.’ (p. 216)

• ‘The muscles the face uses to say ‘yoga’ seem to make it, unfortunately, go into what I would term a ‘smug shape’ (p. 210).

Why relevant right now:

As women, we need to be teaching all those younger than us that there is hope and adventures to look forward to as we get older. And, of course, we need to all join the movement Moran outlines – a ‘Women’s Union’ for the working environment of the home.

Interest factor: 4.5/5

Coffee table cred: 4/5

Ignorance of external world while reading: 4.5/5

Book cover design: 3/5

Help the existential crisis: 4/5