The Stranger In The Mirror

'I looked in the mirror one morning, and saw the face of a stranger. Who was she, this haggard, bun-faced woman with the softening jawline, the downturned mouth, the world-weary air of a woman who hasn't had what she wanted from life, and knows she isn't going to get it now? Why, it was no one else but me, myself and I.' Middle age took Jane Shilling by surprise. She hadn't seen it coming, and she certainly wasn't ready for it. She lives in a tumbledown urban cottage by the Thames, with a son, a cat and a horse in a livery 50 miles away u a flawed, bittersweet version of the idyll she dreamed of in her 20s. This is one woman's attempt to understand what middle age is, what it means for her and whether, as a new generation of women turns 50, some kind of revolution is under way. The result is a very personal meditation about what it's like to be at the mid-point, looking both backwards and forwards. It definitely won't reverse the signs of ageing but it will make you laugh, it will make you think and it could just make you look at yourself in the mirror in a slightly different way ...