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Title details for Sex and the Seasoned Woman by Gail Sheehy - Available

Sex and the Seasoned Woman

by Gail Sheehy
Kate Reading
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
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2 of 2 copies available
A seasoned woman is spicy. She has been marinated in life experience. . . . She can be alternately sweet, tart, bubbly, mellow. She can be maternal and playful. Bossy and submissive. Strong and soft. . . . The seasoned woman knows who she is. She could be any one of us, as long as she is committed to living fully and passionately in the second half of life.
In her most groundbreaking work since Passages and The Silent Passage, bestselling author Gail Sheehy reveals a hidden cultural phenomenon–increased vitality in women’s sex and love lives after fifty. Sex and the Seasoned Woman is the story of an intimate revolution taking place under our very noses.
Boomer generation women in midlife are open to sex, love, dating, new dreams, exploring spirituality, and revitalizing their marriages as never before. This is a new universe of passionate, liberated women–married and single–who are unwilling to settle for the stereotypical roles of middle age and are now realizing they don’t have to. As life spans grow longer and as societal constraints continue to loosen, older women–once free of the exhausting demands of young children, needy husbands, and demanding careers–find themselves ready to pursue the passionate life. They embrace their “second adulthood” as a period of reawakening.
Written in Sheehy’s singularly compelling style, combining interviews and research, this book gives voice to more than a hundred fascinating and colorful women. The inspiring stories tell of wives who reinvigorate their marriages after their children leave the nest as well as divorced, widowed, and long-single women who find new dreams and new loves. Sheehy delineates a crucial link between cultivating a new dream and reopening the pathway to intimacy and sexual pleasure. She also examines the latest medical breakthroughs addressing symptoms that have unnecessarily curtailed women’s sex lives.
From women who find their sexuality reawakened by a younger lover, to couples whose marriages survive health crises and grow stronger, to women who finally find a soulmate in their sixties, to stories from seasoned sirens in their seventies, eighties, and even nineties, these portraits cover an enormous range of experience. In them, Sheehy locates the universal patterns that enable us all to recognize and understand our own lives.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 10, 2006

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781415953303
      • File size: 346951 KB
      • Duration: 12:02:48

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      In her newest look at human passages, bestselling social chronicler Gail Sheehy turns her attention to sex, love, and dating in women over 50. Narrator Kate Reading lends her distinguished voice to Sheehy's exploration of the misconceptions, medical findings, and universal patterns defining the seasoned woman. Reading narrates with bright intelligence. Although there are few opportunities for character interpretation, she manages to bring vitality to the stories revealed through anecdotes and interviews with some 200 women, and adds a solemnity to Sheehy's generalizations based on this limited evidence. There's nothing revelatory here, but for those who feel an active sex life is over for them, Sheehy's book offers some interesting options. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • AudioFile Magazine
      This is a well-researched lesson on how women over 45 can live fully in every area of life--especially sexually. In the second half of her life, a woman usually switches from pleasing others to expressing her deepest desires and talents. With the life span approach that she used so effectively in PASSAGES, Sheehy's stories have a familiarity that speaks to the heart without being sentimental or purely inspirational. She creates an openness and excitement about the possibility of finding sexual and emotional fulfillment. By discovering her unique gifts and capabilities, a woman can find many avenues for expressing herself in relationships, in work, in life. Sheehy's thinking and writing about these matters are unparalleled and her narrating fluid and genuine. T.W. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 28, 2005
      Sheehy, a self-described seasoned woman, set off in search of others like herself. Her premise? There's "a new universe of lusty, liberated women, some married and some not, who are unwilling to settle for the stereotypical roles of middle age." Aside from the question whether the 200-odd women she contacts constitute a representative universe, her claim is hardly revelatory. Older women (especially Europeans) have known from time immemorial that age has nothing to do with desire and an urge to live passionately. What makes a difference these days is the opportunities afforded by online dating sites. Short on research, Sheehy, best known for Passages,
      makes do by stringing together colorful stories of the women she interviews, drawing inflated conclusions from their lives and claiming it all as part of yet another passage (will it ever end?) to Second Adulthood, with phases like "the Romantic Passage" and "Soul Seeking." The book's most chilling bit of information: you really do lose it if you don't use it. But take heart, ladies; Sheehy provides the name of a doctor who employs a nonsurgical method of rejuvenating the vagina, making it just as pink and open as it was when you were... that's right, young.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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