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BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HOT PLACE
By: Tracey Jackson
Why Fifty Is Not the New Thirty
Harper
February 2011
On Sale: February 15, 2011
304 pages
ISBN: 006166927X
EAN: 9780061669279
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A funny, fearless, no-holds-barred look at agingβhormone replacement therapy, online dating, eye lifts, and all As she approached her fiftieth birthday, Tracey Jackson found herself bombardedβat the gym, at parties, in conversations with friendsβby a catchphrase on everyone's lips. "Fifty is the new thirty" and the endless magazine articles, photos, and T-shirts proclaiming the new aphorism had apparently bloomed out of a collective sense of denial, masking the true fears of a generation unwilling to relinquish their youth. With a comedy writer's training and a screenwriter's eye for detail, Jackson skewers the myth in Between a Rock and a Hot Place, a hilarious, bare-knuckled, and ultimately practical appraisal of what middle age really means today. Willing not only to face the elephant in the room, but to put him under a (large) microscope, Jackson confronts the truth about death, work, and sex in what the French call the "third age," using poignant, laugh-out-loud stories from her life. Jackson examines the changing roles of motherhood and wifehood; the necessity of planning a "career after your career"; the unvarnished reality of our aging bodies; and the generational shift in our perception of age ("Tight abs was not a phrase my grandmother had ever heard. And even if she had, her response would likely have been, Who needs that when you have a girdle?"). Turning fifty is a wake-up callβbut one that can be greeted with a plan. Recounting the changes she went through, the things she learned (and things she didn't) en route to fifty, Between a Rock and a Hot Place navigates, with unsparing honesty and unerring wit, the confusion and uncertainty of the most significant uncharted transition in our lives.
 Media BuzzMartha Stewart - April 26, 2011
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