Monday, August 8, 2022

Ten midlife coming-of-age novels

Sarah McCraw Crow grew up in Virginia but has lived most of her adult life in New Hampshire. Her short fiction has run in Calyx, Crab Orchard Review, Good Housekeeping, So to Speak, Waccamaw, and Stanford Alumni Magazine. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College (AB, history), Stanford University (MA, journalism), and Vermont College of Fine Arts (MFA in writing). When she's not reading or writing, she's probably gardening or snowshoeing (depending on the weather).

The Wrong Kind of Woman is her literary debut.

[Q&A with Sarah McCraw Crow]

At Lit Hub the author tagged ten "notable midlife coming-of-age novels," including:
Tessa Hadley, Free Love

British novelist Tessa Hadley writes gorgeous evocations of characters at all ages, but especially women in midlife. Free Love follows forty-year-old Phyllis Fischer, who makes a seemingly silly and precipitate decision: After a kiss with a twenty-something family friend, she leaves her suburban life and her husband and kids behind. Within days, she’s entered a very different life in swinging-Sixties-grungy-mod London. Though this new life takes some turns for the worse, Phyllis finds her own way, twenty years after marrying, having children, and living as a suburban wife.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Free Love is among Meg Mason's five notable bittersweet novels.

--Marshal Zeringue