This week on the NYR Daily

On the NYR Daily this week Sometime back in December, I saw a tweet that got my attention from [Rose George](, the [Yorkshire-based British writer](, whom I follow because she writes about important stuff and also tweets about trail-running—or, as they call it in Yorkshire, fell-running (the noun “fell” being the Northern English dialect word from Old Norse for moorland hills). This tweet was not about running, but about menopause and depression. I had to read more—so I asked her for a personal essay about it. As Rose mentions in the piece, “[‘It Feels Like a Derangement’: Menopause, Depression, & Me](” (August 8), it took months to write—partly because she was finishing work on a book, but not least, also, because of the debilitating effect of her hormonally related depressive spells. Many people find menopause and depression both hard to talk about, let alone write about in an intensely personal way, but that wasn’t Rose’s obstacle. “By now I’m used to writing about unmentionables and it doesn’t bother me,” she told me. “It took me a long time to write this piece: not because I was ashamed of getting depression, but because I didn’t want to think about it when I didn’t have it.” “Most taboos are there to silence people,” she elaborated. “In the case of the menopause, periods, incontinence, menopause, I think taboos are there because women are supposed to stay quiet. It frustrates me enormously that so many women have such a hard time but just put up with it, when there may be help available. But the menopause has been so understudied, the help is often patchy or inadequate. Taboos are dangerous; if I can dismantle them in any small way, I’m glad.” All her books, whether about refugees, sewage, or shipping, have an immersively researched quality. Back in the late 1990s, Rose had been an editor and writer at the then-ground-breaking Benetton-backed magazine COLORS, but she got her start at The Nation here in New York. “Interns were treated as intelligent additions, not servants or trouble,” she said. “I learnt to fact-check properly, and also to report and write concisely and compellingly (I hope).” In 2011, she returned to COLORS to guest-edit [an issue on “Shit”](—the subject of her 2008 book The Big Necessity. So what was the starting point of her new book? “I think I briefly became the Periods Correspondent for The Guardian,” she joked. “But once I’d asked one question—why is menstrual blood considered dirty?—I knew I wanted to look more broadly and deeply at blood. Nine Pints is the result, and it contains far more than periods: there are leeches, and cow-milk transfusions, and an extraordinary woman who partly founded our national blood supply.” OK, enough about books. The running: what’s the connection with writing, I wondered. “I started running on a container ship. I was traveling on Maersk Kendal for my second book, and there was a gym. I got good at running while swaying,” she explained. “Later I became a fell-runner, which is what I am now. Fell running is confused with trail-running but it’s very different: races sometimes don’t have flags or markings, and you have to find your own way between checkpoints. You can be running over anything: scree, rocks, mud, bogs. It’s technical, so your brain has to constantly calculate, and it’s a great mental workout. Without fell-running and fresh air, I doubt I’d do any writing. It’s essential for sanity.” Amen. Finally, a brief announcement about how you can contact us at the Daily, especially to comment on what you’ve read: you can now email me and Lucy McKeon at daily@nybooks.com. Most weeks, we’ll pick a reader’s comment and post it here, with our attempt to respond (if one seems demanded). We look forward to your feedback. Matt Seaton Editor, NYR Daily You are receiving this message because you signed up for email newsletters from The New York Review. [Update preferences]( The New York Review of Books 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014 [Unsubscribe](