MEET THE AUTHOR - GEORGIE HALL: WOMAN OF A CERTAIN RAGE

Georgie Hall is the alter-ego of best-selling author and woman of a certain (r)age, Fiona Walker. Stepping aside from her usual big-cast comedies to write as Georgie, she has her sharp-eyed wit firmly fixed on midlife, marriage, motherhood and menopause. Woman of a Certain Rage is for women everywhere who refuse to be told it’s too late to shake things up.

Georgie tell's us a little more .....

"Like many Generation Xers growing up in the 80s, my understanding of menopause was both negative and nebulous. It felt cloaked in secrecy, this angry loss of fertility. The butt of Les Dawson jokes, it was veiled in secret shame. When I was in sixth form, my mother went through what she rigidly called The Change of Life: standing outside in the snow in her nighty trying to cool down; her oestrogen cream kept by the eggs in the door of the fridge, an ironic touch. She was far more stressed and tearful than usual, although she later told me that had more to do with other factors: my sister and me heading off to distant universities and leaving an empty nest; her own mother’s advanced Alzheimer’s; her marriage hitting a shaky patch; she hated being fifty. She saw menopause as an unwelcome extra burden best not talked about, like piles. 

Being a self-obsessed teenager at the time, I had my head far too deeply buried in Mum’s latest Jilly Cooper or Jackie Collins to pay her hormones much attention. Interestingly, both authors were turning fifty themselves back then, fellow bestsellers Shirley ‘Lace’ Conran and Barbara Taylor Bradford just a few years ahead of them. Yet no mention was ever made of menopause by these goddesses of racy fiction. In their imagined worlds, older women were powerful matriarchs or cougars seducing toyboys. Their oeuvre taught me about roguish heroes, tidal wave orgasms and the Mile High Club, and I adored them for it.  

I owed them a debt of inspiration when I became an author in my twenties, part of a new generation of women writing upbeat escapism, later known as Chick Lit. I’ve written dozens of novels over the ensuing decades, and many of my readers have grown up alongside me, yet I also reached my late forties with barely a hot flush featuring in a story. It was only when I started to experience my own menopause symptoms and searched in vain for a relatable slice of fiction which shared its ups and downs, that I realised how little it’s ever mentioned, let alone given centre stage. While periods, PMT and pregnancy are a mainstay in women’s fiction these days - big pants, bloating, stretch marks and all - puberty’s evil older sister remains ignored. Given it’s such a universal female experience, and so normal, this oversight came as a shock. Most fiction in the UK is read by women over forty, after all, so where are the menopausal heroines? 

By then, I’d booked a GP’s appointment and wept that I wasn’t sleeping, felt permanently fearful and restless – and all too often hot - and had lost my libido. The impatient response was ‘a lot of us feel a bit low in middle age’ followed by a swift recommendation of diet and exercise, and had I considered cycling? I now wish I’d had the presence of mind to point out that the only cycle I wanted to discuss was my menstrual one, and that my periods had stopped when I had a coil fitted after my second pregnancy, so had no idea what state my hormones were in. When I did eventually get a blood test, I was informed by the practise receptionist that it showed up ‘nothing unusual for a woman your age’ but that ‘contraception is probably no longer necessary’. Sensing a mortal coil beyond Mirena, I lay awake some more, twitchy-legged, volcanically hot and doomed. 

In hindsight, I can’t believe how ignorant and unprepared I was for menopause, or how isolated I felt. I’d blithely imagined I’d have a 5 in front of my age before it kicked off, and that it would all be over in a couple of months. Blindsided, I struggled to confide in anyone. My friends and I were accustomed to shared truths about our beloved kids and boring marriages, not the fever dream of night sweats, vaginal dryness and staring at the ceiling feeling wretched at 3am. Yet here I was at forty-seven, aflame, anxious and malfunctioning. 

It was easiest to chalk it up to stress, and in truth much of it was just that. We’d moved house four times in six years; my career was wobbling and my partner’s business struggling; one parent had just died, the other diagnosed with terminal illness, and our younger daughter’s autism was a daily challenge. There were plenty of reasons to ‘feel a bit low’. But menopause was there too, wrapping itself invasively around everything else. Just as it had been an unwelcome kick in the teeth for poor Mum - and for millions of midlife women now as then - it was the extra blow I didn’t need.  

Unlike my mother’s generation, however, mine is an outspoken, emancipated one determined to share what happens to our bodies and minds, and to view menopause as a coming of age. For my part, this meant writing a novel featuring a menopausal, midlife heroine. The plot burst into life as soon as I started writing down ideas. When I ran the idea past my literary agent, she simply replied ‘do it!’ 

I did. In Woman of a Certain Rage, fifty-year-old Eliza’s sandwich-generation life leaves precious little wiggle room for me-time, let alone fading hormones. Exasperated that her family takes her for granted and that her acting career’s been reduced to voice-overs, she sets out to taste freedom again, menopause or not. I wrote it for every woman out there who feels overloaded and overlooked in midlife, and who burns in bed wondering what’s hit her. I was also adamant that this shouldn’t be a book solely about menopause; it’s a novel whose heroine is going through it whilst still juggling a million other things.  

By the time Woman of a Certain Rage was published, celebrities like Davina McColl, Gabby Logan and Mariella Frostrup were headlining as menopause influencers, and the media was catching on to how important this conversation is, that it’s half the world’s lived experience past, present and future. It felt like the veils were dropping at last. I celebrated loudly. 

I’m still celebrating, although I appreciate there’s some way to go in fiction. I hope that before long Woman of a Certain Rage will be one of legions of novels with a central character experiencing menopause. I’d especially love to see menopause normalised in stories that mothers and daughters share, with rollicking plots and without embarrassment. It’s about time we recognised ourselves through all life’s stages. Writing Eliza was a joyful process, a celebration of women’s ability to walk through fire and come out stronger for it. 

Publishers remain understandably more comfortable bracketing menopause in non-fiction. It’s a difficult and divisive topic and - rather like talking about one’s recurring dreams or birth experiences - many regard it as self-indulgent. But so long as they’re still talking about it, that’s fine by me. Whether you chose to write about it or not, broadcast about it or not, take HRT or not, is a personal decision. There’s no right way of doing menopause, as Eliza discovers. There’s just doing it."  

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Woman of a Certain Rage by Georgie Hall is published by Head of Zeus. 

Georgie Hall is a pen name for Fiona Walker.  

Visit Woman Of A Certain Rage page for more information and details on how to buy this book.

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