- The Change — Germaine Greer, 1991
Greer at her most provocative on the cultural refusal to take menopause seriously, and the doubled refusal when it arrives early. The book is dated in places and still indispensable on the strange grief of a body that has gone ahead without asking.
- 45 Years — Andrew Haigh, 2015
A marriage shifts in the week before an anniversary, partly because of something that surfaces from decades ago, partly because the body and its history will not stay where they were put. Charlotte Rampling holds the camera while a life quietly reorganizes around an early ending.
- Blue — Joni Mitchell, 1971
Mitchell wrote these songs in a private hinge moment, and they have the temperature of a body and a life entering a new phase before the surrounding world has caught up. The record is for anyone whose interior season has changed ahead of the calendar.