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Article: Middle-age dread. (book review)
- Article from:
- The Mail on Sunday (London, England)
- Article date:
- December 23, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Solo Syndication Limited. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: HELEN DUNMORE
Middle Age by Joyce Carol Oates Fourth Estate [pound]10.99 _[pound]8.79 (0870 165 0870) *****
Salthill-on-Hudson is a small town with a charmed life.
Inhabitants are luxuriously housed on three-acre plots in a mud-free mimicry of country life. Husbands commute the half-hour to New York to work as bankers or lawyers, while wives engage in charitable work and high-maintenance beauty routines.
Happiness, however, eludes them.
Sex is not what it was, their grown children are lumpen and unloving, and middle-aged flesh, however pampered, is plagued by aches and pains.
Salthillers fear that nothing of ...