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Rage, lust and radical growth: 5 hot menopause novels
visibility comment0 event October 25, 2026 timer 21:00
Menopause has always been a universal female experience. So why is so-called ‘meno-lit’, with midlife hormonal changes at the core of these novels, a new phenomenon?
Cristian Rojas/PexelsNovels featuring older female characters enduring the joint horrors of ageism and misogyny have been around for a while. But fiction foregrounding the specifics of midlife hormonal changes is a surprisingly recent phenomenon.
Given the medical profiles of menopause (and its predecessor, perimenopause), perhaps it’s unsurprising that wellness guides and health-related memoirs have led the way.
Journalist Sam Baker’s pioneering The Shift, actor Naomi Watts’ Dare I Say It and Darcey Steinke’s Flash Count Diary combine personal experience with research. Handbooks like Liz Earle’s The Good Menopause Guide and Dr Mary Claire Havers’ series on perimenopause and menopause focus on disseminating facts.
Now that fiction is catching up, terms like “meno-lit” and “hot flush noir” are surfacing – just as “chick-lit” was once used to patronise commercial women’s fiction. Hopefully, the increasing visibility of menopausal protagonists will move past the novelty phase and become a mainstay of the novel. After all, the stages of menopause are a universal female experience. Surely, it’s time they were integrated into the wider realms of fiction.
Here are five novels tackling the early stages of menopause with fervour.
1. Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood
On a swelteringly hot day in London, 45-year-old Grace Adams is having a terrible time. Her husband has left her, taking their teenage daughter, Lotte, and she has lost both her part-time jobs after a spell of excessive sick leave and missed deadlines. Determined to deliver an expensive and lavish 16th-birthday cake to Lotte’s party – which she has been expressly excluded from – Grace, running late and stuck in traffic, is finally undone by a hot flush.
In a move directly inspired by the 1993 film, Falling Down, Grace, “on fire from the inside out”, abandons her car and sets off on foot with the cake, venting her anger as she goes. Furious at the injustice of her situation, sick of feeling socially invalidated, she smashes her way across north London as the full details of her predicament are revealed in this cathartic and entertaining novel.
2. All Fours by Miranda July
Miranda July’s widely celebrated All Fours is about an artist who secretly curtails an extended road trip to New York, by turning off the freeway half an hour away from her Los Angeles home. Keeping the truth from her partner, the unnamed narrator rents a motel room, becomes infatuated with a local younger man, reappraises her identity as a wife and mother, and redefines her sense of self as a 40-something woman.
Loosely autobiographical, July’s book upends the traditional narrative that women are done and dusted with the drop-off of oestrogen. A story of sexual and creative freedom, it re-positions coming-of-age from youth to midlife, suggesting middle age is the optimal time for radical growth and self discovery.
In this way, perimenopause constitutes a powerful rite of passage, rather than an undesirable descent towards death.
3. Broken Light by Joanne Harris
Taking her cue from Stephen King’s Carrie, Harris re-imagines the story of a teenage misfit empowered by hormones as the tale of 49-year-old Bernie Ingram, whose menopause activates a bizarre array of long-suppressed psychic abilities.
Lonely, underconfident and married to an aloof and unaffectionate man, Bernie’s feelings of invisibility are compounded by the onset of menopause. But the brutal murder of a woman in a local park triggers her childhood memories, and suddenly her hot flashes (Harris’ preferred term) reignite her capacity for mind-reading. Treading a line between revenge and justice, Bernie sets out to disarm as many misogynists as she can, using her paranormal ability to meddle with their thoughts and intentions.
Combining magical realism with feminist politics, Harris veers between humour and horror in a book that manages to be entertaining and thought provoking, and has been endorsed by Ian Rankin and Marian Keyes.
4. I Love the Whole World! by Victoria Hannan
Joyful, uplifting, shimmering with hope and humour, Hannan’s third novel charts the adventures of 43-year-old Leslie McDonald, who wins a trip to Las Vegas. As she sets off from her home in Australia to the United States’ gaudy gambling mecca, the now-divorced Leslie reflects on her stifling marriage to an uptight physiotherapist. And she surrenders to the wonders of a world she has never properly engaged with.
Slowly, beyond the dazzling facade of the city, out in the stunning desert landscapes, Leslie struggles with the heat, battles her perimenopause and starts to get a grip on her potential. Finally, with the help of an old friend, she embarks on a pilgrimage that leads her into new geographical and personal territories, after 20 years of being lost to herself.
A profound ode to the power and mystery of the natural world and the promise it holds for humanity, this is a whip-smart story of optimism and courage that balances out the more rageful accounts.
5. My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes
At the age of 48, widow Anna Walsh quits her job as a high-flying beauty publicist in New York and moves back home to Dublin to be near her beloved tribe of sisters. But when a new job reunites her with her troublesome old flame, Joey Armstrong, Anna’s dwindling supply of HRT brings her menopausal issues sharply into focus.
An outspoken proponent of HRT herself, Keyes handles the topic of midlife romance with her characteristic wit, humour and tenderness.
As Anna considers the implications of taking a lover on the cusp of 50 amid the challenges of menopause, the book defies sexual stereotypes of undesirable older women with a heroine who is positively lusted after by a man who has known her for decades.
Liz Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Tags: Academic Journalism, The Conversation, The Conversation Academic News
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