Writing an autobiographical account of middle age is a brave undertaking, necessitating a great deal of self-scrutiny at a time of life when most of us would sooner look the other way and hope for the best. Jane Shilling took up riding relatively late (she even joined a hunt, as described in her book The Fox in the Cupboard), so she has physical daring. The Stranger in the Mirror shows that she also has emotional and intellectual courage.
Unsurprisingly, the news is not good. God and gardening are the traditional refuges of the menopausal, but neither seems to hold much interest for Shilling. Romantic entanglements seem unlikely and her teenaged son is advancing towards independence: solitude looms. Career prospects diminish. Looks aren’t what they used to be. Regrets prosper. She fears, in a chilling phrase, ‘an inability to be delighted’. Her clothes look peculiar on her. Shilling is particularly good about the strange mutiny of her wardrobe:
The disjunction between the person I felt myself to be inside and the person my clothes announced me to be was intensely disconcerting — a sort of sartorial aphasia, as disturbing as finding oneself suddenly unable to communicate in a language one had once spoken fluently.
This will be all too familiar to readers of a certain age.
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