- Published: 15 January 2012
- ISBN: 9780099506157
- Imprint: Vintage
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 256
- RRP: $29.99
The Stranger in the Mirror
A Memoir of Middle Age
- Published: 15 January 2012
- ISBN: 9780099506157
- Imprint: Vintage
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 256
- RRP: $29.99
An intelligent discursion on what it means to be a no-longer-youthful female in a world obsessed with staying young ... Her thoughts are refreshing, provocative and a pleasure to read
Metro
Shilling's style, dashingly cavalier and artfully artless, bubbles with wit and brio
Independent
Jane Shilling is an outstandingly good writer...she also has emotional and intellectual courage
Spectator
Shilling's thoughts on love and ageing are so wise and so memorably expressed that they would grace a literary novel... Shilling's mild obsession with control and with the delicate, the exquisite and the theatrically miniature almost makes her into a latter day Jane Austen
New Statesman
Wry, quietly fuming and often moving memoir of a midlife cri de couer... exceptionally companionable, occasionally bejewelled and richly sustaining broth of a book
Sunday Telegraph
I loved this book so much I gulped it down in just two sittings... Jane Shilling is a peerlessly elegant and evocative writer
Libby Purves, Mail on Sunday
Shilling is brave and endearingly frank
Scotsman
Imagine Montaigne as a thoroughly modern unmarried mother and freelance journalist living in south London... Everywhere there is detail, and nuance, and care about others, and about words
Guardian
Shilling is a gorgeous writer and there are chunks of this book that I would happily steal... If this woman wrote a novel I would buy it in a heartbeat... Shilling puts the ageing process under the microscope and, as we read, we squirm
Jenny Eclair, Observer
An honest midlife memoir of ageing, false expectations and unrealised dreams
Michael Binyon, The Times
Detailed, personable and memorable
William Leith, Scotsman
Her story may not be unusual, but the elegance and range of her writing most certainly is. The journey is a delight
Daily Telegraph
Fans of this beautifully crafted, critically acclaimed memoir of middle-age might well take the view that it should be distributed free on the NHS to all women over 50... a penetrating analysis of the challenges and heartaches of life's middle phase
Katherine Whitbourn, Daily Mail
Shilling casts a self-critical eye over the events that have shaped her life
Emma Hagestadt, Independent
Jane Shilling is an excellent writer...this is detailed, personal and memorable
William Leith, Evening Standard
The essay form, with its drifts and lurches, suits Shilling's purposes perfectly as she catalogues her experience of middle-ages confusion and loss... all with detail, nuance, enthusiasm and care
Ian Sansom, Guardian
The usual stereotypes about grumpy old women are jettisoned in favour of ironic and nuanced observations about sexuality, identity and death in this crisply written memoir about middle age
Benjamin Evans, Daily Telegraph