by Helen Ellis
First published 2021
Helen Ellis opens her world to readers through twelve essays that capture the raw reality of female friendship at midlife. She takes us to a reunion with her closest friends on the Redneck Riviera, where the women unpack far more than suitcases. They share stories of marriages and children, deceased parents and lost employment, along with powdered onion dip and old photographs that must be handled carefully at the edges. The group confronts dirty humor and sunscreen with higher SPF than their senior year bang heights. One friend receives a troubling mammogram result, a diagnosis that frightens them all but cannot destroy their connection. Ellis explores the intimate details of married sex in middle age, cries alongside a theater full of women during a psychic healing session, endures twenty injections of stomach bile to eliminate her double chin, and finds the nerve to address menopause directly. These women refuse to be diminished as they approach fifty. The essays reveal both spectacular humor and fierce devotion among friends, creating an experience that feels like attending the most engaging cocktail party imaginable.
Genres: family-life, friendship, contemporary, adult-fiction, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family
Setting: Redneck Riviera
Period: Midlife
176 pages · Paperback · Random House Large Print