In her new memoir, The Madwoman in the Volvo, writer and performer Sandra Tsing Loh tells the story of her personal roller coaster of menopause. It includes an affair with a married man, the explosion of her marriage, and the pressure of keeping her daughters off of Facebook while managing the legal and marital hijinks of her eighty-nine-year-old dad. ? ?
Surprisingly, deeper research into the biological science of menopause suggests that this is all normal. Loh deduces that this midlife “madness” is less about menopause than about the madness of the world: trying to maintain appearances during an epic hormonal (physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual) change.
Sandra Tsing Loh is a contributing editor to The Atlantic and the author of five previous books. She is a regular commentator on NPR’s Morning Edition and PRI’s This American Life and has performed two solo shows off-Broadway.
