If You Love It, Let It Kill You

"Literature about the anxieties and dissatisfactions of 40+ women is one area in which, thankfully, middle-aged women are not to be disappointed. To the recently rich genre plumbing the particular discontent of this stage in life, add Hannah Pittard’s latest. Her narrator – significantly, Hana P. – is a funny and restless English professor plagued by the impending publication of her ex’s autofictional novel. Any midlife woman who has felt a little deranged by a relentless mix of desire and irritation will recognize herself in Hana, even as her mind takes unique and surreal detours. Read it for the mix of comedy and malaise, and for dessert, you can plumb the internet for the epic literary back-and-forth between Pittard and her ex-husband about their real-life breakup. Pittard’s novel is fabulous and stands on its own, but it also serves as her very satisfying last word on that matter as well."