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she “just ended up doing almost noth- ing. I just sat on the couch alone most of the day, watching TV and eating Doritos and not showering.” Media is a small enough world that I read this story with a sense that I knew who this woman was, despite the disguised identity and pseudonym. But maybe I don’t. Maybe this is not something that’s happened just the once. That woman’s tale and some others in the book point to gendered differences on the midlife crisis front. On the one hand, human reproduc- tion and heterosexual dating conven- tions are such that a man who wants to leave his family and start a new one at 50 might have the option to do so. On the other, the married woman who burns out at work or abruptly loses her job can, finances permitting, pivot to the social role of housewife or stay- at-home mom, even if privately she wishes her career were thriving, and even if her family is under financial strain from the income loss. (All due respect to stay-at-home dads, but our cultural narratives are still gendered on this score.) What the anecdotes of blown-up trajectories and small tweaks alike convey is that self-improvement doesn’t require drama. If anything, making a radical life change abruptly often inhibits it. The advice in The Midlife Plot Twist is sound and sensible. Be gentle with yourself, including memories of your younger self. If you need therapy, seek it out. Pursue your own goals, not the ones others may have for you. And if you’re unsatisfied with your lot, make smaller changes rather than leaping to blow up your entire life. It’s a pep talk from a friend who gently reminds you that a fleeting frustration at work is not a reason to quit with no back- up. It’s a mix of empowerment and talking-down-from-ledge, writ-
referred to, condescendingly, as “adorable,” and share the authors’ inter- pretation of such language as patroniz- ing. The writing style anchors the book in our moment, or maybe a moment that passed before its publication (the inevitable fate of non-fiction books, to a point, given publishing timelines). Is this a problem, though? The Midlife Plot Twist is not meant to be a time- less book about middle age. Rather, it’s for women of a certain generational cohort and general world view, reach- ing midlife at a particular time. So I for- give the “microaggressions.” The tension between universality and specificity plays out throughout the book. A portrait emerges of a tar- get reader who’s an everywoman, but also a certain sort of woman: “We set up auto-pay for our bills, splurged on $12 Cosmos (another reason Sex and the City owes us reparations), attend- ed destination weddings, and used it to cover the gaps between how we want- ed to live and our crappy paychecks.” As would be expected in a general- audience book of this genre, Jewish specificity is more at the level of hu- mour than cultural detail, though I flagged one exception: “Though we know all about the ‘sitting shiva for Great-Aunt Doreen’ type of grief, the idea of grieving the end of a life phase might feel weird or even self- indulgent.” In today’s literary climate, I think that qualifies The Midlife Plot Twist as a Jewish book. In its (I think) successful quest for general relevance, different chapters address unrelated struggles. There’s advice on how to rev up your libido, how to get out of debt, and how to set boundaries. There’s a chapter about caregiving for aging parents and one on friendship, but while some specific examples of motherhood come up, there’s no chapter or sec- tion about parenting. This is a bit of a
ten from the perspective of women familiar with the ledge in question. It’s a guide to, as the millennials once said, adulting. Adulting — that cringe-inducing term — is more spe- cific than being a responsible adult who pays bills on time and faces an- noying bureaucratic tasks head-on. It’s doing so despite finding the prospect daunting. The target audience is some- one who needs a nudge to adult. It is also someone comfortable with, perhaps comforted by, the language of 2010s-style progressivism. There are sentences like, “We’re subject to sexism, racism, ageism, and other systemic ills we can’t escape just by buying a gratitude journal and taping a sticky note that says I am ENOUGH to the bathroom mirror.” Also, “To use the language of our times, cultural ageism is an endless onslaught of microaggressions.” These observations aren’t wrong. I too wince when elderly people are You’ve reached midlife not at any numerical age, but when you realize you’ve aged past When I grow up.. .
64 AUTUMN 2026
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