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The Hot Flash Club: A Novel
 
 
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The Hot Flash Club: A Novel [Paperback]

Nancy Thayer (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)

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Book Description

November 23, 2004
From the bestselling author of Between Husbands and Friends and An Act of Love comes a wise, wonderful, and delightfully witty “coming of age” novel about four intrepid women who discover themselves as they were truly meant to be: passionate, alive, and ready to face the best years of their lives.

Meet Faye, Marilyn, Alice, and Shirley. Four women with skills, smarts, and secrets—all feeling over the hill and out of the race. But in a moment of delicious serendipity, they meet and realize they share more than raging hormones and lost dreams. Now as the Hot Flash Club, where the topics of motherhood, sex, and men are discussed with double servings of chocolate cake, they vow to help each other . . . and themselves.

Faye, the artist. A determinedly cheerful widow and connoisseur of control-top pantyhose, she’s struggling with creative block and an empty, lonely house. Now she’s got a tricky problem to bring to the club’s table: how can they catch her perfect son-in-law cheating on her only daughter Laura?

Shirley, the healer. Though her yoga-slender body belie her years, decades of dating losers and the strain of being broke make her feel her age. Shirley has a secret dream: a wellness spa that nurtures body and soul. But first she needs to believe in herself, in her abilities, and in her friends at the club.

Marilyn, the brain. A paleontologist who has spent so many years looking at dried-up fossils, she’s almost become one herself. Worried that her brilliant but nerdy son is about to marry the very wrong woman, she gets some help from the HFC, who transform her from a caterpillar to a butterfly, with amazing results.

Alice, the executive. Black and regal, she soared to the top of the corporate ladder. Now her shoes are murder on her arthritic back and the younger jackals are circling in for the kill. But as the inspiration behind the HFC, she’s about to discover something extraordinary: contentment.

For Faye, Shirley, Marilyn, and Alice, the time has come to use it or lose it—be it their bodies, their brains, their spirits, and their sense of fun. Together they realize that they can have it all, perhaps for the first time in their lives. And though what sags may never rise again, feeling sexy has no expiration date— and best of all, with a little help from her friends, a woman can always start over . . . and never, ever, give up what matters most.


From the Hardcover edition.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It's chick lit for the AARP crowd in Thayer's spirited but not very funny 14th novel. A chance meeting at a cocktail party brings four Boston-area women in their 50s and 60s together to found the titular club, in which they confess their woes and plot to help one another. Recovering alcoholic and perennial hippie Shirley, a talented masseuse, unknots workaholic Alice, who clues Shirley on how to dress for success, craft a business plan and establish her dream spa-retreat. Brilliant and lovable, but a "dowdy academic," Marilyn botches her attempt to save Alice's high-power job but rediscovers her sexuality (after the Club revamps her wardrobe) and loses her insufferable husband, Theodore. Faye, a widow and blocked painter, solves a locked-room mystery while sleuthing on behalf of Marilyn and also discovers her inner art therapist. Thayer dutifully lays down her threads and weaves them into a busy plot. She bluntly and repeatedly tackles the physical consequences of menopause: hip spread ("a confetti of cellulite"), flabby midsections ("like having a sleeping puppy lying on a pillow in her lap, except that when she stood up, the puppy, pillow and lap remained") and hair loss (but "you can get a wig for your pubic hair.... Something called a merkin"). There are tender and funny moments, but the novel suffers from awkward expository dialogue, long stretches of backstory, and-surprising from much-published Thayer (Between Husbands and Friends; Stepping)-too many instances of telling rather than showing.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Best-selling author Thayer fashions a delightfully quirky look at the pains and the passions of middle age. Four menopausal women meet at a retirement party and discover they have much in common despite their disparate backgrounds and educations. Bonding and banding together, high-powered career gal Alice, widowed matriarch Faye, New Age masseuse Shirley, and mousy academic Marilyn decide to join forces in a collaborative attempt to solve each other's professional, marital, physical, and emotional problems. The results are hilarious as they discover both the rewards of sisterhood and the power of chocolate. Still, each woman gets more than she bargained for when fate--with a little help from the club members--takes dramatic and unexpected turns. Sure to be a hot item, this humorously poignant tribute to women of a certain age has the potential to charm readers of all ages and both sexes. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Ballantine Books (November 23, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 034546916X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0345469168
  • Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #970,761 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

53 Reviews
5 star:
 (22)
4 star:
 (15)
3 star:
 (6)
2 star:
 (5)
1 star:
 (5)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (53 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Very Enjoyable!, January 12, 2004
This review is from: The Hot Flash Club (Hardcover)
How refreshing to read a book about four women in their mid-fifties to early sixties who experience pleasures and problems we real women of a certain age can relate to: grown children and their problems, retirement, husbands, and boyfriends and menopause with weight gain, to name a few.
It's a story of friendship and support told with humor and compassion that will be a break from books with that always young and perfectly beautiful protagonist.
All the women are so interesting, and the book so well written, you will find yourself eagerly turning each page, yet dreading when the book ends.
How I'd love to find more books like this!
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Funny, Insightful Look at Four Women's Dealing With Aging, February 26, 2006
This review is from: The Hot Flash Club: A Novel (Paperback)
Faye, Shirley, Marilyn and Alice meet and bond over dessert, while sharing their issues with aging. Their different views and abilities (a clueless science professor, an uptight personnel director, a flighty massage specialist, and a lapsed artist) combine to tackle the varied problems that plague them.
Their concerns about their appearance, treatment as older women, sexuality, finances, loneliness, worth in the workplace, and other issues will ring true for many readers. Despite these topics, the book uses humor well.
You can almost see the movie in your head as you're reading. The dialogue and scenes reminded me often of Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin in the hilarious movie "Nine to Five."
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars FIFTY IS HOT!, August 2, 2007
By 
Kim Robinson "siammuse" (Duluth, MN. United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
"The Hot Flash Club" should be mandatory reading for every woman over 50! If one doesn't feel good about themselves before reading this little gem, they will love themselves afterwards.

Contrary to popular belief---mature women are vital, sexual, and outrageously, deliciously dynamic! Nancy Thayer creates memorable characters whom the reader will identfy with, laugh with, cry with, and love. Several story lines are woven in "THFC" like a colorful, unexpected quilt--quick, witty dialouge, fun, fun, fun!

Nothing is over, baby. Even if a few things are drooping, wrinkled, and not the same as when you were 20 years old---they are still very much alive, lovely and lush.

You are still a tigress--only at 50--you are more wise and wonderful!

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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
It was while Faye was gathering donations for the community tag sale that she realized, with a shock, that any stranger going through her house would think she was obsessive, anal-retentive, or, at the very least, eccentric. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
violet eye shadow, plastic bracelets
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Golden Moments, Eugenie Eastbrook, Alison Cummings, Barton Baker, Jennifer D'Annucio, Van Dyke, Julie Martin, Alice Murray, Lila Eastbrook, Shirley Gold, Nora Salter, Gideon Banks, Roy Orbison, Bill Weaver, Marilyn Becker, Maud Lewis, Melvin Watertown, Thank God, Eloise Linley, Genevieve Anne, Lars Schneider, Miss Eastbrook, Legal Seafoods, Teddy Becker, Arthur Hudson
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