11/04/2019
Memoirist Calhoun (Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give) explores the stresses keeping Gen X women up at night (both literally and metaphorically) in this bracing, empowering study. As women born between 1965 and 1980 enter middle age, Calhoun writes, they face “a gauntlet of anxieties” related to their status as “the Jan Brady of generations,” sandwiched between older baby boomers and younger millennials. Interviewing middle-class American women she met through friends, social media, and in doctors’ waiting rooms and other random encounters, Calhoun discusses worries about money (“Gen X has more debt than any other generation”), divorce (“our generation are the beta tested victims of the Boomers’ record-high divorce rate”), and caring for young children and ailing parents simultaneously (“the caretaking rack”). She shares her own experiences as well as data from the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Harvard’s Equality of Opportunity Project, among other sources. Despite all the damning statistics (“one in four middle-aged American women is on antidepressants”) and real-life reports of exhaustion, ennui, and husbands who go on ski trips instead of paying the electric bill, Calhoun persuasively reassures Gen X women that they can find a way out of their midlife crises by “facing up to our lives as they really are.” Women of every generation will find much to relate to in this humorous yet pragmatic account. Agent: Daniel Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency. (Jan.)
Praise for Why We Can’t Sleep
New York Times Editors' Choice
Featured on The Today Show, The Tamron Hall Show, Live with Kelly and Ryan, NPR, and on the Cover of O, Oprah Magazine
The Indie Next Pick of January 2020
One of Vogue's Best Books to Read this Winter
One of 10 Most Anticipated Books of 2020 by Forbes
Named One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2020
“[C]andid and engaging. [Calhoun] is a funny, smart, compassionate narrator…. I admired her insistence on taking women’s concerns seriously.” —Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times Book Review
“Women are taught to not feel anything for ourselves and to not feel for one another. And our generation is the smallest generation...[Why We Can’t Sleep] is a book that makes you feel less crazy. Like oh, it is not my imagination.”—Kelly Ripa on Live with Kelly and Ryan
“Calhoun speaks directly to her own generation, peppering the book with so many specific cultural touchstones… that I found reading Why We Can’t Sleep to be a singular experience – driving home her point that Gen X is so often overlooked. —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Timely, humane, raw, honest, and sincere.”—Forbes, 10 Most Anticipated Books Of 2020, According to Independent Bookstores
“[A]n engaging hybrid of first-person confession, reportage, pop culture analysis, and statistics… it aspires to something larger than memoir.” —Rumaan Alam, New Republic
“A superb mix of personal stories and deep research about a generation of women who are facing unprecedented pressure as they enter middle age. It’s at once realistic, but positive, asking women to face up to reality, let go of expectations, find a support system and accept this stage isn’t forever.” —Huffington Post
“Marriage implosions, rising debt, and a constant sense of failure pop up throughout this brief but potent and sometimes funny book... Why We Can’t Sleep might do much to let readers like the women Calhoun writes about that they are not alone.”—Literary Hub
“[A] Bracing, empowering study… Women of every generation will find much to relate to in this humorous yet pragmatic account.” —Publishers Weekly
“Calhoun’s latest will be useful for those interested in feminist theory, especially insofar as it intersects with age and class, as well as a useful resource for people struggling to find balance in their personal and professional lives.” —Library Journal (Starred Review)
“Ada Calhoun provides a thoughtful, incisive account of the myriad challenges facing Generation X women.” —Shelf Awareness
“An assured, affable guide, Calhoun balances bleakness with humor and the hope inherent in sharing stories that will make other women feel less alone. She also gives good advice for finding support through midlife hardship. This is a conversation starter (as well as a no-brainer for book groups that count Gen X women among their members) that might get Boomer and Millennial readers curious, too.” —Booklist
“Ada Calhoun's soulful investigation into the complex landscape women in midlife face today is downright stunning. Calhoun has captured the voices—some broken, some resilient, many barely staying afloat—of over 200 women from around the country and in doing so, shown us how much we share in divisive times. You will recognize yourself in these pages, breathe a sigh of relief, and think, I'm not alone.”—Susannah Cahalan, author of the New York Times bestselling Brain on Fire
“This is the book of our generation. Ada Calhoun brilliantly encapsulates the struggle and confusion that is the Gen X woman’s experience in middle age. And by placing this condition into the context of the generations coming before and after, she makes sense of how it is that we’re so surprised that we have failed at having it all. Heavily researched, expertly paced, and seamlessly woven together, Why We Can’t Sleep provides an ‘aha’ moment that at once validates our experience and establishes a sense of community and hope.”—Janet Krone Kennedy, PhD, Clinical Psychologist, author of The Good Sleeper and founder of NYC Sleep Doctor
"It’s difficult to grapple with the immense anxiety and fear so many women go through alone, but Ada Calhoun’s artistry as a writer makes her the perfect guide through the rough business of middle age."—Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill
“’Having it all’ was the Baby Boomers’ rallying cry as, aided by new tools of reproductive control, we burst from the pink ghettoes of the secretarial pool and ceaseless childcare to seek fulfillment in workaholic professions. Two generations later, despairing Gen X women find the glass mountain of fulfillment still impossible to scale, and with deep perception, wit and incisive analysis, Ada Calhoun tells us why, tracing the internal as well as the external forces that separate women from the peace they’ve spent their lives earning.”—Harriet A. Washington, A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind
“Helping women realize that some difficulty, some confusion, is not just all in their mind is probably one of your more feminist acts, and the impressive amount of research Ada Calhoun did on the very specific forces, past and present, that are bedeviling Gen X women as they face the strange period that is midlife is just that kind of gift. But the other gift is that she writes with clear sight, compassion, and hope about our very specific talents and tenacity. Which means: this book is a thousand times more healing than a jadeite egg!”—Carlene Bauer, author of Not That Kind of Girl
“I love Ada Calhoun’s writing. Why We Can’t Sleep just took me to school, laughing all the way there.”—Adam Horovitz of Beastie Boys
★ 11/01/2019
For women experiencing the signs of midlife, this book by Calhoun (Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give) collects stories relating to mental health, especially depression and anxiety, along with issues such as financial insecurity, job instability, parenting, caregiving, divorce, and other concerns that might prevent someone from getting a restful night's sleep. Built on personal narratives and research-based data, chapters focus on themes such as success, including what it means to be successful and the cost of achieving personal and professional success. Specifically looking at Generation X women, Calhoun asks why she and others continue to feel miserable despite traditional markers of success, such as children and a good career. Her research offers women ways to look at but not devalue their own experiences; she addresses the fact that women often minimize their own struggles instead of recognizing how their lack of sleep, along with other physical and mental pressures, constitute legitimate crises in their own right. VERDICT Calhoun's latest will be useful for those interested in feminist theory, especially insofar as it intersects with age and class, as well as a useful resource for people struggling to find balance in their personal and professional lives.—Emily Bowles, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
2019-09-29
Calhoun (Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give, 2017, etc.) argues that Generation X women find middle age harder than those older or younger.
The author is in her 40s and not enjoying this stage of life. In her latest, she offers a combination of her memories, recycled research, and interviews with "women who, by virtue of being middle class, grew up with reasonable expectations of opportunity and success." Calhoun is far more successful when she focuses on the problems of being a middle-aged American woman than when she attempts to define the nebulous differences between baby boomers, Gen Xers, and millennials and to convince readers that Gen Xers are suffering in ways that those older and younger aren't and won't. She defines Gen Xers as those born between 1965 and 1980 (data supplied by the Pew Research Center). On the basis of scanty evidence, Calhoun identifies them as being latchkey kids and children of divorce and hampered by receiving "two primary messages" from their childhoods as the offspring of overly optimistic feminist mothers: "One: Reach for the stars. Two: You're on your own." The author argues, for example, that Gen X kids were uniquely scarred by being witnesses to the Challenger spaceship disaster, neglecting to acknowledge that other generations—if generations can even be separated so neatly—had their own public traumas. Much of the book is devoted to demonstrating the suffering of "her" generation: "Gen X women undergo a bone-deep, almost hallucinatory panic about money," she writes, blaming this alleged state of mind on the fact that "much of Gen X graduated into a weak job market." Calhoun is on firmer ground when she discusses the stressors that affect middle-aged women in general: menopause and the physical changes that precede it, the challenges of dealing with older (and less appreciative) children and aging parents, and the fact that aging inevitably means that some life choices are no longer viable.
An occasionally amusing and insightful but scattershot exploration of midlife woes.
