Younger
Pamela Redmond Satran is the type of author I’d like to be. Her book, Younger, is the type of novel I’d like to write. It’s easy to read, inspiring without being preachy, and the main character is easy to empathize with. I have some of her earlier books on my “must read” list.
Alice is a middle-aged woman who has had a really bad year. Her husband left her for his much younger dental hygienist, her grown daughter joined the Peace Corps, and, her mother, who suffered from Alzyheimer’s, died. Thankfully, the story doesn’t dwell so much on the recent past as it does on her transition into a new life, one in which she rediscovers who she used to be while she decides who she wants to be now. Along the way, she falls in love. With a much younger man.
From the introductory page:
“Okay,” Maggie said decisely. “I think you’re ready.” She propelled me across the loft to the mirror.
I swear, at first I didn’t recognize myself. I actually swiveled to look behind me, thinking somebody else may have walked in when I wasn’t looking.
Somebody blond. Somebody hot. And somebody very, very young.
“I can’t believe this,” I said, blinking hard.
Maggie grinned. “I’d take you for twenty-two!” she crowed.
When I was really twenty-tow, I was finishing up my study of Jane Austen and the Brontes at Mount Holyoke, with my hair scraped back in a ponytail and my body swathed in big baggy sweat clothes — it might as well have been a burkha — and my thick glasses perennially sliding down my unpowdered nose. I had certainly never looked like this: buff and blond, wearing lipstick and baring cleavage and looking smart and a little bit slutty.
“Who is she?” I whispered.
But Maggie, who was busy checking her watch, didn’t hear me. “It’s almost midnight,” she said. “Time to take the new you out for a test run.”
If you’re looking for a nice evening’s read, I highly recommend Younger.