“Don’t Stop is about Ina, a 41-year-old literary scholar who finds herself questioning everything in the aftermath of an impulsive kiss with a stranger... Friedman dances around well-worn questions that may be obvious but also too complicated to answer: How do aging women find meaning if not in motherhood? What constitutes a well-lived life? Which activities make life worth living? Friedman writes with the female fury of Ferrante... Don’t Stop is an unflinching, and often humorous, take on middle-aged sex and romantic entanglement... The idea of not stopping recurs throughout as a not-so-subtle echo of the title. It becomes clear, though, that the idea of linear progression, without stopping, is a fiction. Don’t Stop makes clear that we are finite beings, and that pursuing something usually means stopping something else. What emerges is a complex portrait of self-discovery in middle age and a reminder that we are never done finding ourselves.”
Read the full review in On the Seawall.
