Middle age: A romance - Joyce Carol Oates

In Salthill-on-Hudson, half an hour outside New York, the inhabitants are beautiful, rich and, though they look younger than they really are, middle-aged.

When the enigmatic sculptor Adam Berendt dies suddenly, his death sends shock waves through the town. Middle age, ordinarily not a time for passion or romance, is transformed by his loss as his close friends evaluate their lives and set out to re-define them in startling and original ways.

Middle Age is a richly sympathetic yet unsparingly comic view of present-day affluent American from one of the finest writers of contemporary fiction.