Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A brave book with a polemical argument on the paradoxes, struggles and advantages of aging.

How old am I? Don't ask, don't tell . As the baby boomers approach their sixth or seventh decade, they are faced with new challenges and questions of politics and identity. In the footsteps of Simone de Beauvoir, Out of Time looks at many of the issues facing the aged--the war of the generations and baby-boomer bashing, the politics of desire, the diminished situation of the older woman, the space on the left for the presence and resistance of the old, the problems of dealing with loss and mortality, and how to find victory in survival.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

British academic Segal (Is the Future Female?), a professor of psychology and gender studies at London's Birkbeck College, gracefully explores the subject of aging in this combination memoir and analysis. Segal outlines fears about growing older and discusses our culture's ingrained negative attitudes about the elderly female body, as well as men's fear of losing their masculinity as they age. The author also highlights the joys of love and sexuality as one grows older. The book's most politically charged section addresses the inevitable effects of the increasing class divide on the elderly; the younger generations, hit hardest by the recession, blame the baby boomers for the poor economy, while the older generations are already struggling with the fact that financial security is necessary for aging happily. While Segal seamlessly incorporates psychoanalytic theory and passages from writers like Simone de Beauvoir, John Updike, and Alice Walker, she also offers her own perspective as a feminist and scholar, reminding readers that the process of aging is never simple or straightforward. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

CHOICE Review

Segal (psychology and gender studies, Birkbeck, Univ. of London, UK), who is now in her late sixties, explores the complexities of aging in modern society. Eschewing findings of scientific investigations of the elderly (results she calls the product of "sophisticated bean counters"), Segal instead draws from her own personal experiences, along with themes taken from a wide range of writers and thinkers, including Sigmund Freud, William Shakespeare, Philip Roth, John Updike, Penelope Lively, May Sarton, Doris Lessing, Betty Friedan, David Hockney, and Plato. Taking a socialist-feminist perspective, she moves beyond the artificial division of "aging well" versus "aging badly," which implies specious assumptions of the human experience. She writes about the complexities of aging for individuals across a long life lived, important variability within supposedly homogeneous groups, and notable differences in experience as they vary by gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status. Segal's primary themes involve the profound impact of social ties--including lovers, friends, and marital partners--for extracting the most meaning from a thoroughly lived life, and the value of embracing both the intense "pleasures and miseries" of aging. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. C. J. Jones California State University, Fresno

Kirkus Book Review

Extended meditations on aging. Segal (Psychology and Gender Studies/Birkbeck, Univ. of London; Making Trouble: Life and Politics, 2008, etc.) opens this memoir/essay collection by admitting that the concept of aging, and of considering one's place in the world through the increasingly foggy lens of old age, stirs anxiety and even fear. We spend our youthful years moving through the world, trying to construct the "self" we want to present to our peers, and then we spend our older years pining for that youth, trying to hold on to all of its attributes. Segal questions whether there is a way to place positive value on the attributes of old age without paradoxically strong-arming the questions of physical health, mental integrity and the labyrinth of feeling young/looking old. The author explores the thorny questions of dependency, but she goes deeper than just the idea of the reversal of caregiving duties; she explores avenues of dependency, what it can mean in positive and negative terms for those roles to change, and how it never seems to be truly one way or another, except at birth and then at the parent's advanced old age. Segal walks us through a lively outline of the history of how culture(s) looks at aging, with stories rendering evil as unattractive and old, goodness as beautiful and young. It comprises only a small part of the book, though, as the author's primary concern is the inner workings of the psyche as age progresses; matters of ageism, relationships changing shape over the years and shifting responses of resistance to death--all these topics and more find voice in this powerful narrative. Segal refers to multiple cultural touchstones in service of her writing; this book should become a touchstone itself for those interested in aging.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Lynn Segal was born in 1944 in Australia. She emigrated to London in 1970 and for the next decade her main energies went into grass roots politics in Islington, North London, helping to set up and run a women's centre and an alternative newspaper. In 1979, the three friends, Segal, Sheila Rowbotham and Hilary Wainwright wrote Beyond the Fragments, arguing for broader alliances among trade unionists, feminists and left political groups. In 1984, publisher Ursula Owen invited her to join the Virago Advisory Board and write an appraisal of the state of feminism, resulting in her first book, Is the Future Female? Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism. Her next book was Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men. In 2015 her title, Out Of Time: The Pleasures and Perils of Aging, made The New Zealand Best Seller List.

(Bowker Author Biography)