The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones

by Sandra Tsing Loh

Overview

From an “imaginatively twisted and fearless” writer (Los Angeles Times), a hilarious memoir of middle age.

In a voice that is wry, disarming, and totally candid, Sandra Tsing Loh tells the moving and laugh-out-loud tale of her roller coaster through "the change." This is not your grandmother's menopause story. Loh chronicles utterly relatable, everyday perils: raising preteen daughters, weathering hormonal changes, and the ups and downs of a career and a relationship. She writes also about an affair and the explosion of her marriage, while managing the legal and marital hijinks of her eighty-nine-year-old dad. The upbeat conclusion: it does get better.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393351095
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	05/04/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	625,476
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Sandra Tsing Loh is a writer and performer. Her work has been heard on NPR’s Morning Edition and This American Life. Her book The Madwoman in the Volvo was a New York Times Notable Book of 2014. Loh lives in Pasadena, California.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Gloomings 13

Burning Woman 21

Bridges 37

Menopause, Old 42

Menopause, New 50

Life in the (Happiness) Projects 61

Gym Dandy 82

A Brief Discussion of Manopause 91

Parenting Adolescents During Perimenopause, or Medieval Times 94

Bench Warrant for My Father's Arrest 114

Losing It 127

The Shit Hits the Fan 143

Couples Therapy Round 117 164

Rental Dog 173

House Cat 175

The Sudden Death of My Father 196

The Caregiver's Journey 201

Ladies of the Lake 203

The Great Retreat 210

Dinner at Home 224

Dr. Valerie 227

The Wisdom of Menopause 230

The Contents of My In-box 244

Turning Fifty 247

Old Lady Running 265

Menopause Tips 270

Acknowledgments 281

Editorial Reviews

"Loh is that rare writer who is howlingly funny on the surface and subtly brilliant just beneath…Goes down like cheap wine—fast and furiously—yet at the end, instead of a hangover, you have a bold and beautiful new view of life."

Cathi Hanauer

"[Reading this book] I laughed maniacally, nodded in empathy, hooted, teared up, and laughed some more."

Mary Roach

"Reads like a weekend away with the best friend you ever had—blazingly vulnerable, scorchingly smart, and funny as hell."

Cheryl Strayed

The Madwoman in the Volvo is not the first book on the subject…though Loh's ranks among the most horrifyingly amusing…[a] brave and witty memoir…Loh is such an engaging writer she manages to make this extremely difficult time hilarious. Make no mistake, however: For women, this is some serious stuff.

The New York Times Book Review - Judith Newman

03/31/2014
Southern California author Loh has amply demonstrated her stand-up comic skills in her syndicated radio show and previous autobiographical works (Mother on Fire) and here faces down her life at sudden impasse in her late 40s. Having left her longtime husband and father of her two preteen girls, Mr. X, as she calls him, two years before, she took up with Mr. Y, a theater colleague and friend of 10 years whom she regarded as the Ethel to her Lucy, “the sunny island my shipwreck had landed on.” After a reckless affair that she compares to a prison break (“We dug ourselves out of our cells with spoons, and we ran for it”), the two left their spouses and cohabited. Tsing Loh, half-Chinese, half-German, recognized that her abrupt fits of weeping, “gothic moods,” worry, and manic energy were no doubt the first symptoms of menopause. Resorting to cursory research and plenty of secondhand advice from sister “frumpy Generation Xers,” who were busy mothers and caregivers to elders, Tsing Loh’s remedies involve everything from hormone replacement therapy to plant-based forms of estrogen, and “happiness projects” to counteract the force of “gloomlets” like puppies and the color yellow. From her own histrionic blowout with her new partner that requires therapy, Tsing Loh learned that women going through menopause need compassion and hydration, above all, and the encouragement to see the potential for wisdom when the cloud of hormones lifts. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"[A] brave and witty memoir."

New York Times Book Review - Judith Newman

"Does what every memoir ought to do: it reminds the reader she’s not alone."

Los Angeles Review of Books - Claire Dederer

2014-03-05
A writer and syndicated radio host's no-holds-barred account of how she survived the rigors of midlife crisis and menopause. When Atlantic contributing editor Loh (Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting!, 2008, etc.) reached her late 40s, the stability and rationality that had characterized her world suddenly vanished. Feeling vaguely trapped by a staid marriage, she made a "prison break" with an equally bored married man into what she thought was the freedom of an affair. The result was a messy divorce and an even messier period of regrouping. But Loh's malaise persisted and began to manifest as physical symptoms—including bloating, weight gain and rapidly shifting moods—she could neither explain nor completely control. With candor and attitude to spare, the author chronicles how she navigated the unexpected transformations that occur in all midlife women. Determined to find a way to endure "the change" with her sanity intact, she explored everything from best-selling books about finding happiness to hip new exercise trends like Kettlebelling. But sometimes even her best efforts were not enough. As she tried to cope with her unsettling physical and emotional changes, she also had to deal with other volatile situations. One was her two daughters' transitions into adolescence and immersion into "the peculiar horrors of Facebook." The other was her eccentric octogenarian father's decision to marry a younger woman he thought would take care of him but who would eventually be diagnosed with a severe case of dementia. Loh observes that late baby boomer/early Gen-X women like Madonna, Oprah and Demi Moore have helped remove the stigma associated with "the change" and shown that menopause can be a time of female empowerment rather than hysterical helplessness. Humbled and changed from the inside out, Loh still celebrates menopause as a brand of wisdom revealing "this chore wheel called modern life" for the sham it is. A funny, frank and hopeful memoir of middle age.

Kirkus Reviews