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“Fertility is such a difficult feminist issue because our biology has not caught up with our politics.” In her inspiring debut, The Panic Years, journalist Nell Frizzell examines the period in a woman’s life when she can have children, and the many dilemmas, sorrows and joys that come with it.
Frizzell’s approach to warts and all goes deep into her subject, using her own life and the experience of her peers and friends, to give us a raw, moving and important book on what it means to be a woman in society. today.
She also refers to her titular thesis as “The Flow,” which works well to describe the passage of time and the swirling decision-making that accompanies it: “Something between adolescence and menopause, a personal crisis, a transformation.
If you’ve ever needed an antidote to the sentimental, signature version of female fertility and motherhood, this book has it in spades.
During this period of a woman’s life, which ranges from her mid-20s to early 40s, most choices, from postcode to partner to career, will be based on an irreversible decision: to have or not a child.
Similar in subject matter to Sheila Heti’s motherhood, The Panic Years is not about the decision itself, or rather it is not, like Heti’s autofiction, agonizing indecision. She wants a baby but hasn’t found someone to have it with. This riddle gives the book its tension. As we learn about the many types of women – women who get pregnant early or accidentally, who have abortions, who have no children by choice – Frizzell’s desire for a baby is heart pounding. of the book.
Sincere
We’ve known from the start that she eventually becomes a mother, but how far she has come makes her fascinating read. His writing style tends to excess. Frizzell gives an extraordinary amount of detail on daily events. For the most part, this works to bring us a fresh, heartfelt account of a woman trying to stay sane in pursuit of something everyone around her seems to be capable of doing.
Take her best friend Alice, who announces her pregnancy in a cafe one morning, while the author has a viciously (and hilariously) hangover. The news becomes “a focal point of panic, longing, heartache, longing, uncertainty and confusion … Of course you feel happy for your friend.” Or, most of the time, you do. If you’ve ever needed an antidote to the sentimental, signature version of female fertility and motherhood, this book has it in spades.
UK-based freelance journalist, Frizzell has written for The Guardian, The Vice, The Telegraph and Grazia, among others. Her first book is not new in its scope – authors like Anne Enright and Rachel Cusk have written masterful memoirs on similar subjects – and it must stand up to some notable contemporary publications on the female experience.
In Ireland alone, writers Sinéad Gleeson, Emilie Pine and Doireann Ní Ghríofa come to mind. Closer to home for Frizzell, The Panic Years remembers fellow journalist Paula Cocozza, whose debut novel How to be Human also touched on the issue of motherhood in unshakeable and original detail.
Frizzell is well able to follow his contemporaries. Her book is packed with realistic and visceral details on everything from FoMo pregnancy to the horrors (and joys) of childbirth, her love for her son William and the austere realities of caring for a newborn that never stops. no crying: “I was being pushed to extremes and I didn’t know how long I could hold on.
The author’s desire to educate and include is clear on every page. Even the title stems from a desire to find a phrase that can be easily named, and therefore widely discussed: “Let there be several words for adolescence in all the major European languages and not a single one for this second phase of transformation in a woman. life speaks of two things: that language often lets us down and that we never really took this period seriously.
There is interesting research backing up her theories, on everything from the side effects of the birth control pill and the alarmism about female fertility, to the hard, cold facts of biology that cannot be ignored: “About 10% of people will miscarry at age twenty, compared to 90% or more at age forty-five or more. “
The crux of the Flux, according to the author, is that whether or not you have a baby, there will always be times when the grass is greener. Her book is therefore not only an exploration of what it means to be a woman, but also what it means to be alive: “To live in a human body is to exist in a state of uncertainty.”
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