Blog Tour : Invisible Women by Sarah Long

Invisible Women by Sarah Long

Published: 20th April 2017

Publisher: Bonnier Zaffre

Available on Kindle

Pre-Order now from Amazon

Blurb

Isn't it about time we talked about YOU?

Tessa, Sandra and Harriet have been best friends through first crushes, careers, marriage and the trials of motherhood. After twenty years of taking care of everyone else's every need, they've found themselves hitting the big 5-0 and suddenly asking themselves: 'what about me?!'

Sandra has a sordid secret, and Harriet is landed with her ailing mother-in-law. Tessa is looking for something to fill the gaping hole left by her youngest daughter's departure for uni, where it seems she's now engaged in all sorts of unsavoury activities, if Tessa's obsessive late-night Facebook stalking is anything to go by.

When Tessa impulsively responds to an online message from an old flame, she soon finds herself waiting at Heathrow Airport for The One That Got Away.

But what will the plane from New York bring her? The man of her dreams, or a whole heap of trouble?

And could this be the long-awaited moment for Tessa to seize her life, for herself, with both hands?

Today I'd like to give a warm welcome to Sarah Long who is going to talk about the invisibility of middle-aged women, whom characters in her new book Invisible Women are based. So over to Sarah:

The Invisibility of Middle-Aged Women

That moment when you walk past a building site and nobody wolf-whistles at you. Young women will say, I should hope not, Neanderthal sexual harassment. Older women may say, with a twinge of regret, oh yes, I remember that. When the polite nod replaced the hungry stare. You’d reached a certain age and turned into their mother, you were no longer an object of lust.

Nobody laments the demise of the caveman, but most women will say they miss the attention when they morph into middle age. The loudest complaints come from TV presenters and actors. Their success depends on their looks - unlike their male counterparts who are not obliged to look cute or hot -  and so they are quietly sidelined in favour of younger models. 

The heroines of my novel INVISIBLE WOMEN  are not actors or TV presenters. They are examples of a rather outdated breed, the well-to-do housewife. In fact they refer to themselves as members of the dinosaur club, well aware that it is no longer quite the thing for an educated woman to live off her husband. The lack of a role outside the home reinforces their sense of not being noticed as they grow older, of not counting in a world that increasingly applauds the shouty ones, the sexy ones, the ones with beach-ready bodies.

You’ve only got to read the style advice meted out to middle aged women to get the underlying message. There’s a lot of talk about ‘appropriate’ styles: you can wear mini skirts but only with thick tights; cream is kinder than white against older skin, don’t be a ‘cougar’, don’t wear ‘mum jeans’, whatever the hell they are.   In other words, you’ve had it, you’re ridiculous unless you melt quietly into the background and let the young ones take centre stage.

Bollocks to that. I think we should take our lead from earlier role models. Great old operatic divas with heaving bosoms spilling out of their bodices. Terrifying matriarchs striking fear into whoever crossed their path. Margaret Thatcher would have hand-bagged anyone who told her not to wear those pussycat bows, Bette Davis ruling the roost in All About Eve. The more inappropriate, the better, in my opinion.  

The women in my novel are all emerging from their domestic cocoon to realise it is time to be noticed. Two of them are being particularly noticed by men who are not their husbands. It’s not quite the wolf whistles from the building site – we have moved on, after all – but it’s the kind of attention that forces them out of the shadows and on to the centre stage of their own lives.

INVISIBLE WOMEN by Sarah Long is published by Bonnier Zaffre