The Washington Post - USA (2022-03-06)

E18 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MARCH 6 , 2022

book world

BY MARIA LEONARD OLSEN

I

revel in opportunities to

question older people about

what they have learned. My

family used to beg me not to

talk to random strangers,

but my endless curiosity yielded

fodder in my professional life and

guidance in my personal endeav-

ors. Reading Ellen Warner’s “The

Second Half: Forty Women Re-

veal Life After Fifty” is like having

one of those intimate conversa-

tions with each of 40 women from

around the world as they share

their formative experiences and

advice for younger generations.

Their insights are particularly

valuable in a country where inter-

generational learning is often

lost, where finding assisted-living

housing for our senior family

members is more common than

moving them into our homes.

“The Second Half” profiles a

curated group of interesting

women who have hit their stride

and used earlier experiences as

“compost for what’s growing in

the second half,” as one of the

book’s subjects, Luisah Teish, a

shaman and spiritual anthropol-

ogist, aptly describes it. Many of

the women have been scarred by

SEE WARNER ON E19

W omen over 50 share their

life stories, lessons learned

THE SECOND

HALF

Forty Women

Reveal Life

After Fifty

By Ellen Warner

Brandeis

University Press.

257 pp. $35

LILY WARNER

Author Ellen Warner worked for 15 years on “The Second Half,” which profiles

40 of the many women over 50 (two over 100) she interviewed for the book.

The students of Helen County

High are dealing with sex

ed, group projects for The

Crucible, and a small-town

scandal that might not be

a total witch hunt.

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