Forward From Here: Leaving Middle Age--and Other Unexpected Adventures

Reeve is the daughter of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and famous aviator Charles Lindbergh. I've ruminated about what to say about this book. At times it was touching, and yet overall, it seemed more self-absorbed than insightful.

She is a good writer, but the book seems to lack substance. I very much liked two other books that I read which I thought were excellent, namely Under A Wing A Memoir and No More Words: A Journal of My Mother

A collection of essays by Reeve Lindbergh consisting mostly reflections on the milestone of her 60th birthday. Some are more interesting than others. This may have to do with shared perspectives and experiences in some and a lack of sharing on others on my part. I suspect that there is little to relate to in the book for someone who is not a 'boomer'.

A big disappointment, especially from the writer of Under a Wing and No More Words. I skimmed most of it. She only seemed alive when she quoted from her journals - otherwise she was pedantic and stilted.

"Leaving Middle Age--and Other Unexpected Adventures"
Turning sixty makes the author take stock and reminisce. Also discusses the fact that 30 years after her father's death and 2 years of that of her mother, she finds out that her father had three other families in Eurooe--and goes to meet her siblings.
T

Publishers Weekly Review: In this collection of poignant essays, Lindbergh (No More Words) struggles to extract meaning, and even solace, from an imperfect everyday reality. Heading her list of concerns is her looming 60th birthday and the change and decline that it symbolizes -- the departure from home of her children, a benign brain tumor, the therapeutic drug culture that is the hallmark of old age in America. Despite her anxieties and losses, she manages to find in fragile, flawed things -- a broken sea shell, a heron that's lost a leg -- a kind of beauty. Lindbergh also explores her fraught relationship with her father, the aviator Charles Lindbergh, "an angry, restless, opinionated perfectionist" whose "very presence alternately show more crowded and startled everyone", and grapples with the discovery that he had secretly fathered seven children -- her half siblings -- in Europe. Set mostly amid the tranquil surroundings of her Vermont farmstead, Reeve's essays are suffused with a sly, gentle humor that supports her quiet resolve to carry on. show less