Something that happens to other people.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Ellison, Anne
• Date: 01 January 1997

Susan Feldman, Barbara Kamler & Ilana Snyder (eds) Something that happens to other people (Sydney, Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 1996)

The cover describes this book as a collection of eight short stories about women's lived experience of growing older. The editors, Susan Feldman, Dr Barbara Kamler and Dr Ilana Snyder work as researchers and teachers in higher education in Melbourne. They describe Something that happens to older women as an attempt to push the boundaries of ageing as we normally conceive them. Traditionally, ageing involves loss and pain, and, in feminist Betty Friedan's words, is a time to dread. However, the editors argue that these are not self defining. Nor is ageing simply `surviving the passage of time'. The idea for the book was conceived after listening to Betty Friedan at a dinner in Melbourne in 1993. Since that time, the editors have been in contact with the writers, older women and a growing network of individuals or organisations interested in ageing, particularly women ageing. The writers, Glenda Adams, Lily Brett, Sara Dowse, Elizabeth Jolley, Joanna Murray Smith, Georgia Savage, Roberta B. Sykes and Elisabeth Wynhausen are all well known writers working in Australia. Not all write from personal experience. Two of the stories are fictional (Jolley and Sykes). The range of characters is diverse from Jolley's shrewd aunt teaching her nephew a thing or...