Coming of Age … Again is a love story written for older women.
By Ramune Luminaire
Writing has always been a huge part of my life. I’ve journalled since I was young. Remember those cute little diaries that locked? I’ve still got several, stacked alongside decades worth of exercise books and hard-covers in a trunk in the basement.
After college, I got a job as the secretary to the editor of Living magazine in London, England. From there, I inveigled my way into writing for a teen magazine and my first assignment was a piece about what it’s like to be deaf—not easy when you don’t sign.
I worked as a beauty writer, comparing products that claimed to do everything from removing eyebags to repairing nails; a features writer, interviewing celebrities including Judy Dench and Jane Russell; and best of all, a travel writer, road-testing honeymoon hotels all over the world.
Then I decided to try television. Because of our experience in women’s magazines, my friend and I talked our way into making a video for a makeup brand and soon we had our own production company. I loved writing for TV and ended up scripting an award-winning training film that starred talking vegetables; corporate documentaries about everything from industrial pollution to supermarkets and a steel foundry; and a program designed to combat racism in the Metropolitan Police.
At this point I was still in England and unmarried, with a burning desire for change. That led me to art school and then a decision to return to Canada, the country of my birth. I had started life in Montreal and when I was ten my family relocated to England, but I still had my Canadian passport.
So, in my 40s, I moved from central London to the woods of Ontario with a man I was dating and we built a house here together. That was an adventure! And getting married, after all those years of independent singledom, was huge. But the thing that kept me going, and sane, was journalling. Gradually our life in Canada worked out. We made friends, found employment, learned to live together, and although I was working as a visual artist and educator, I was still writing.
But I had never tried fiction. What made me want to add yet another novel to the millions already out there? I was driven by the wish to create a book I wanted to read, specifically written for me—an older woman. There are too few stories that centre on older women’s life experience, reflecting the emotional journeys of more mature characters, especially when it comes to love stories.
In fact, there aren’t that many older women characters interested in love at all and they are seldom feisty—apart from the wonderful Olive Ketteridge, made famous by Frances McDormand, who could only be called feisty. Most older protagonists are looking back on life, managing a dying husband and opinionated children or coping with failing health and declining mental faculties. Or they are Miss Marple.
What I wanted to read was a love story about a woman coping with problems only faced in older age—to do with changes in her body, the delicate balance between a desire to move forward and a longing to hold onto the past, the struggle between a wish for love and a need for independence, as well as the usual factors that figure into love stories: conflict, vulnerability, trust.
Coming of Age … Again will be published May 15 and available from independent
bookstores, Amazon, Kindle and Apple Books.
