The Madwoman in the Volvo

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 31 MAR 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.