When my 25-year marriage broke down in 2017, I did what I always do in my life, especially in times of crisis. I turned to books. Specifically, to books by women.
Many, but not all of them, were in middle age, writing about their lives post-husbands – often post-intensive mothering too. They’d arrived at an unmarked place. There were no literary or narrative models to follow, in their lives or in their art. So they were making them up as they went.
My hunger for women’s voices was amplified by having spent a decade reading and listening almost exclusively to men, for the books I wrote on accounting.
