Situated at the crossroads of gender studies, narratology, and cultural studies, this book investigates the impact that the demographic and cultural revolutions of the last century have had on Italian womens' life courses.

The chronological focus of this study is the 1990s, a decade located at the end of a century deeply marked by womens' search for identity, their growth as historical subjects, and the demographic explosion of older women in Italy's population.

The authors critical response is directed toward sensitizing readers of Italian womens fiction to a life-course perspective and guiding their responses to the age-based constructions that pervade the Italian cultural imaginary. Her assumption is that age consciousness affects narrative strategies; the critical questions and concerns that she addresses are incentives and guidelines to age-conscious reading and literary criticism.

The study is divided into two parts that represent an ideal progression from contexts to texts. In the first par, the author traces changes in the representations of womens aging bodies during different phases of Italian history. The age-related cultural discourses she discusses in the first part of the book are in dialogue with the aging scenarios presented in the novels analyzed in the second part.