Steinke aptly compares the uncontrollable force of menopausal rage to the transformative anger of the Incredible Hulk ... Unsurprisingly, the available analogies are all male; women are accustomed to translating their subjectivity onto men’s bodies ... Steinke is at her best when she writes searchingly, before the moment of understanding ... Steinke partakes in the current trend of cross-genre memoir—stories that are heavily decorated with quotations, part autobiography and part commonplace book. Sometimes authors get the blend right, but usually the quoted texts are unsurprising, and they stand in for the textured analysis of real life. In Steinke’s case, the standardness is perhaps the point ... Flash Count Diary spends most of its pages documenting the kinship of bodies and metaphysics. One of its most memorable scenes is a dramatic performance of this very kinship—the blurring of bodies and souls ... I hope that Steinke’s book, which I consumed hungrily, will encourage a wave of work by and about women undergoing what is, quite literally, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Like Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts portrays a body’s transformation with a wild mix of research and anecdote, or Deborah Levy’s memoir about middle-age rebirth, The Cost of Living, Steinke’s Flash Count Diary is composed of short, discreet paragraphs separated by white space. Perhaps due to the disjointed thought patterns of the menopausal writer or as a balm for the reader with disjointed thoughts. Either way, it gives the short paragraphs more power. When she travels to a European conference on menopause, it takes few words to depict the foolishness of panel after panel of men preaching the sanctity of hormone replacement and laser or surgical vaginal rejuvenation ... I didn’t want to finish this book, to lose [Steinke's] voice telling me my body is nothing to be ashamed of, and, yes, my sense of injustice is sharper.

Steinke wants her book to do more. She finds the literature about menopause to be dispiritingly sparse; at one point, she resorts to providing a close reading of a self-help book by the actor and ThighMaster purveyor Suzanne Somers ... Sometimes she seems aware of the glaring discrepancy between her lofty wisdom and the knottier reality ... Too often, though, the insights in Flash Count Diary feel forced, the analogies strained ... The unevenness extends to the writing, which reads well enough when Steinke is recalling moments that left an indelible mark on her memory, her perspective widened by the distance of time. Her current perspective, though, can occasionally narrow to a pinpoint ... But the book still left me wanting more: more voices, more works about this transformation. The subject feels truly fresh.

Her book is lyrical but a bit depressing, because she herself was depressed ... She writes vividly and a little wistfully about sex, mourning her lost desirability, as she sees it, and the waning of her own desire ... Every woman is of course entitled to—can’t escape—her own response to menopause. But Steinke’s melancholy reflections sound a bit retrograde, as if she can’t escape those insufferable doctors, the Wilsons and the Reubens, with their pompous pronouncements about the wreckage that remains when estrogen, like a tide, drains away.

Steinke is determined to butch things out, at least in a medical sense. Like Germaine Greer before her, she regards [menopause medication] as an instrument of the patriarchy ... Personally, I think this is a depressingly retrograde argument, and a pretty stupid one, too. You might as well describe the pill, which also fiddles helpfully with a woman’s hormones, as an instrument of the patriarchy ... Nevertheless, I found myself oddly compelled by this weird, infuriating, uncategorizable book ... But it’s important, too, to remember that not all women experience this time in the same way. Not everyone is as miserable—or even as sweaty—as Steinke ... Her feelings of loss seemed to me to be so extreme I began to wonder whether she hadn’t simply internalized some of the attitudes (to do with female youthfulness and pulchritude) that she most purports to despise ... She develops a fascination with whales ... I loved this section of her book, for its wonder and its sense of inquiry, but there is something muddle-headed, for me, in the way she seeks kinship in animals ... Flash Count Diary is a book you want to argue with and herein lies both its weakness and its strength. It moved me, if not to bright, ascendant rage, then certainly to exasperation. But talk back to it and you may feel (I hope this doesn’t count as inspirational guff) emboldened: more powerful and even, perhaps, more beautiful.

Steinke describes, in excruciating detail, the devastating emotional and physical toll of her menopausal changes ... I’ve no doubt that many women will find themselves in these evocative pages, written with a novelist’s eye and full of random notes and philosophic musings ... Steinke tells her 'new story' through the lens of rage at sexism ... The patriarchy is a convenient villain ... But the patriarchy is not responsible for the fact that estrogen plummets ... Steinke conflates what needs to be done socially and economically to ensure that women in old age are awarded respect and 'move into leadership roles' with what women can do physically to live longer and healthier lives ... I fall on the opposite side of the HRT issue [as Steinke] ... estrogen not only reduces the symptoms that torment so many women like Steinke but also reduces the likelihood of their developing heart disease, osteoporosis and Alzheimer’s ... Any woman inclined to read Steinke’s book should also read an antidote, Sandra Tsing Loh’s hilarious The Madwoman in the Volvo: My year of raging hormones (2014).

Her pursuit of this kindred spirit takes her on a scientific, spiritual, and often solitary journey ... Throughout her odyssey, Steinke brings a fervent feminism and vibrant voice to a subject that has, for far too long, been talked about only in whispers.

Simultaneously contemplative and messily visceral, this extraordinary fugue on menopause, a book 'situated at the crossroads between the metaphysical and the biological,' centers on the experience of the aging woman ... She affirms menopause as part of what it means to be female and human, in contrast to the medical view of menopause as a pathology to be treated with hormone replacements and vaginal rejuvenation. Her ability to translate physical and emotional experiences into words will make menopausal readers feel profoundly seen and move others.

A keen exploration ... In this thoughtful, intriguing, and sometimes-humorous analysis, Steinke discusses the patriarchal attitudes inherent in society ... Throughout, the narrative is stimulating and challenges society to rethink how we view and treat older women ... Provocative ideas and illuminating personal stories.