The New Old Me

Praise

“A funny, seasoned take on dashed illusions.”
—O Magazine

“By turns poignant and funny, the book not only shows how one feisty woman coped with a ‘Plan B life’ she didn’t want or expect with a little help from her friends. It also celebrates how she transformed uncertainty into a glorious opportunity for continued late-life personal growth. A spirited and moving memoir about how ‘it’s never too late to try something new.’”
—Kirkus

“Well-written and smart.”
—Elinor Lipman, Washington Post

“When writer Maran’s idyllic Bay Area life falls apart, she picks herself up and set out to start over—alone in youth-obsessed Los Angeles, at age 60. Inspiring.”
—People

“Memoir at its finest—a patient, funny, open look at a series of life-altering events—Maran’s words are genuine, and her story strikes a deep emotional chord.”
—Lamda Literary

“With wit, hard-won insight and wisdom, memoirist Meredith Maran details how her life came apart when she was 60 years old and how, over a period of three years, she attempted to put it back together.” 
—Shelf Awareness

“I love everything Meredith Maran writes. She is insightful, funny, and human, and the things she writes about matter to me deeply. Her memoir, The New Old Me, is a book I don’t just want to read—I need to read it. So does everyone else who’s getting older and wants to live fully, with immediacy and enjoyment, which is to say, everyone.”
—Anne Lamott, author of  Hallelujah Anyway
 
“Meredith Maran’s memoir about her recent experiences navigating life’s sudden shifts and tilts and swerves, is funny, tough, sweet, and always charming.” 
—Meg Wolitzer, author of The Interestings

“When Meredith Maran lost her best friend, her money, and her marriage at age 60, she could have thrown in the towel, or gone to bed for a year, or become a bitter, angry woman. Instead she made a new, vibrant life for herself in a new, vibrant city, with a new job, new friends, new lovers, and an old bungalow among the lime trees, which she transformed into a writer’s haven and salon. The spirit, resilience, and hilarity on display in The New Old Me offers hope for living soulfully and zestfully no matter what life gives us—now, and at every age.”
—Ayelet Waldman, author of Bad Mother

“The best memoirs keep you enthralled and leave you thinking. The New Old Me does both. Meredith Maran’s wrenching but redemptive journey is a heartfelt, wise meditation on the challenges women face today as we age, and the creativity with which we’re facing them. This is a stirring and captivating must-read for humans of all ages.”
—Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief

“The New Old Me is a poignant story, a funny story, a moving story, and above all an American story of what it means to be a woman ‘of a certain age’ in our time. If you’ve ever wondered ‘where have all the bra-burners gone?’, Meredith Maran will answer your question as she reinvents herself at age 60—in Hollywood, of all places. Any woman who’s ever wondered what life might hold as a modern senior citizen will find much to challenge and reassure her in this absorbing, beautiful book.”
—Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train
 
“How does Meredith Maran do it?  How does she know my secret fears about aging, my not-so-secret flaws? Meredith’s life-changing writing draws me in and makes me root for her, root for myself, root for all of us who have only two choices: get older or die. I depend on her hopeful, horrible, hilariously heartfelt dispatches from the future (she’s just a wee bit older than I). If anyone finds the fountain of youth, Meredith deserves the first sip.”
—Annabelle Gurwitch, author of I See You Made An Effort

“High time we had a book that celebrates becoming an elder! Meredith Maran writes of the difficulties of loss and change and aging, but makes it clear that getting on can be more interesting, more fun, and a lot more exciting than youth. I love this wonderful book.”
—Abigail Thomas, author of What Comes Next and How To Like It

“Meredith Maran’s soulful, funny, beautiful memoir is a refreshing inspiration to me. I’m ten years younger than she is, wondering what’s up ahead. Meredith’s voice is exuberant, lusty, kickass, full of life. She is my new role model for getting older without getting old. She blazes a trail for us all, showing humans of all ages how to create joy and community for ourselves while maintaining a sense of humor, wonder, and curiosity. This book is a godsend. Hooray!”
—Kate Christensen, author of The Great Man
 
“I might have forgotten to breathe for the entirety of reading these pages, some of the very finest writing I’ve read in a long time. What you have here is a universal experience — love and loss, dreams and aging, the heartless indifference of the universe to the securities we so innocently weave around ourselves — distilled through the singular sensibility of an exceptional storyteller and dramatist. Meredith Maran’s question is the cruelest one of them all: How do we mend ourselves after we have been broken? It is a blessing to have among us a writer of this caliber to guide us to the painful, heartbreaking answers. Books are our most intimate and acute means of communication, John Cheever said. If you want to know what he meant, read this book.”
—Boris Fishman, author of A Replacement Life

“Meredith Maran tackles change in The New Old Me. Like many women who can get the senior discount at the movies, Maran found herself in a very different life than the one she’d imagined for herself at 60.”
—Anne Hood, Parade magazine

“Meredith Maran’s hilarious memoir gives hope for late-life reinvention. I love this book!”
—Annie L. Scholl, The Huffington Post

“Former San Francisco Chronicle book reviewer Meredith Maran’s “post-divorce” memoir, The New Old Me, follows her move from the city to Los Angeles as she attempts to start life over again at 60.”
—Ian A. Stewart, San Francisco Magazine