No! I Don't Want to Join a Bookclub

by Virginia Ironside

[MurderByDeath]

If I'm let loose in one of those "as many books as will fill this box for $5" sales, this book is bound to happen.  Bought for title and the cover with only a cursory glance at the summary, I am not this books target market.   A diary-turned-memoir this is a book specifically aimed at post-menopausal, over 60 women who are also mothers; if the reader is also single, so much the better.  As I'm only 1 of those things my ability to identify with Ironside is rather limited.   Still, eventually I'm going to be all those things except a mother, and sooner than I consider ideal, so it was compelling enough to keep me reading.  Ironside starts out really rather unlikeable; at one point early on I told MT I'd be surprised if she'd kept any of her friends after the book came out because she was not kind at all.  She excoriates anyone over 60 that does anything remotely active and waxes rhapsodic about the joys of getting old with "giving up sex" at the top of her list.   Then her son gives her her first grandchild and a not insignificant portion of the rest of the book is a gooey love fest with her grandson at the center.    It's at about the same point in the book the it also became obvious that her whole never having sex again thing is going to go the way of all ridiculous resolutions - she doth protest too much.  By the end Ironside is redeemed and the desire to call this a coming of age book for the senior set becomes irresistible.    This isn't a book I'd have spent money on, but as a book in a box full of books that cost me pennies, it was't bad.  No doubt that if I were to reread this book in a couple of decades, I'll find much more to identify with.