A cautionary tale for all women of all races, Age is not a virtue. If you have a body that is too young for your years, then you must have the grace and poise of a lady of merit. This is the message Juliana Gevaerd attempts to convey in her first full-length novel since the release of her first novel, Heart Dance. Gevaerd takes the reader on a voyage of discovery into the mind and soul of a forty-year-old woman, searching for that ever-elusive balance of youth and age.
The premise of Age is simple: a young woman is hired by her rich, capable employer, Lord Farley, to take care of his dementia patient wife. In addition to managing his wife’s Alzheimer’s, she must balance her burgeoning career and falling in love with a younger man. The task becomes more than a little difficult, but the loyalty, competence, and overall intelligence of Juliana Gevaerd manage to keep things moving in the right direction. Overall, this story manages to capture the heart and soul of a woman who is much older than her chronological age, while at the same time providing something interesting and relevant to our times.
Age is not for the faint of heart, but it is also not a work of farce. Gevaerd creates a complex character, and while I think she does take the age theme slightly too far, her use of it actually works, and I do enjoy how Gevaerd weaves the different strands of her personality and relationships into a cohesive whole. It helps that Gevaerd knows how much a writer should strive to achieve in their final book, and what a writer can accomplish when they take the time to write about someone as complex and intriguing as a forty-year-old.