More Than a Woman

MORE THAN A WOMAN
Caitlin Moran
Penguin Random House

BY WILLIE CAMPBELL

In 2010, having finally finished writing her book How to be a Woman that chronicles the challenging years between 13 and 30, where every part of your being is disrupted and you navigate countless challenges to discover who you are, Caitlin Moran is visited by her future self.

This self who is now 44 makes it clear to her that middle age is in reality the biggest challenge. It is the time when not your problems but other people’s are what challenge you. You start dealing with Real Woman S....

In her successful chatty style Moran is now telling us about this passage through mid-life. She lays this out as a book of hours and the focus of each, for a 24-hour period. We move through the wardrobe evil, the calm sounding-board, the marriage-maintenance sex, the disaster of the teenage daughter with an eating disorder, the wanting to change the world, the idea of the value of a woman’s union. Eventually we reach the ideal state - Hagdom.

When walking the puppy (something all whose daughters are growing up and leaving home need) she realises that the dog park is full of people in her age group and wearing the Hag clothes, non-trendy and practical, the cold swimming pool is also a haven for such and she declares herself committed to Hagosity.

This is a second very cleverly constructed series of insights and is likely to reach the same best-selling status of her first book. We eagerly await post-hagdom.

Willie Campbell is a Dunedin educator