Can anyone recommend a good book about a middle aged woman...

[Fairylights7]

(think between aged 45 and 55) which is not about menopause or trying to fit everything in and is a positive portrayal of middle age life? Thanks

I quite enjoyed The Fine Art of Invisible Detection by Robert Goddard. The middle-aged lady can do 'invisible detection' because she is middle-aged and, ergo, invisible. I liked the character.

Hotel du Lac maybe? I loved that book, but it's been a while since I read it. It may not be very positive?!

Tara road by Maeve Binchey

Hotel du Lac is reet miserable!

Hag

Agree about Elizabeth Strout. I loved Olive Kitteridge, who is older than you age range but a brilliant character.

Still Life by Sarah Winman is a lovely book - real variety of characters, including great female characters, who age throughout the book.

Baking Cakes in Kigali
https://bookinwithsunny.com/baking-cakes-in-kigali/

The pedant in me is compelled to point out that the first word of my 2nd sentence should be Its.

Does it need to be fiction? If not, look at the travel writing books by Dervla Murphy, she was a fearless traveller right up till old age, some of her books will have been written in middle age. She would make for very good discussion in a book group

You should read Mrs Dalloway. It is an astonishing novel, and the 50something protagonist, while she isn’t some jolly cliché, is complex, thoughtful, desired, and both a happily-married Tory hostess AND an ageing, withdrawn woman thinking over her teenage choice between two different men, and the girl who seems to have given her the most intense experience of her life.

Mary Wesley
Anita Brookner (I love Hotel du Lac
Penelope Fitzgerald
Penelope Lively
Rose Tremain
Elizabeth Taylor
Margaret Forster
Margaret Drabble
Muriel Spark
Barbara Pym
Joanna Trollope
Elinor Lipman
Alice Hoffman
Anne Tyler