Coined to define the ennui of mid-30s men, the midlife crisis has evolved, says Benjamin Markovits, bringing a boom in sharp writing about messy middle age

What’s the age limit for a midlife crisis? I wanted the protagonist of my latest novel to have two kids, a son old enough to judge him (maybe in grad school?), and a daughter just about to set off for uni. The story starts when he drops her off in their old Volvo station wagon and keeps driving. His father has died, his wife has had an affair … You need to find the point in life at which various pressures converge: of marriage and ambition, of ageing and dying parents, of children leaving home.

Luckily, from a novelist’s point of view, our definition of midlife seems to be expanding. When the Canadian psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques coined the term “midlife crisis” in 1965, the age he had in mind was our middle 30s; average UK male life expectancy was 65. Now it’s 80, but there have been cultural shifts, too. These are harder to measure, but it feels as though the emotional distance between generations has shrunk. Parents now argue with their children over the family Spotify account. All of which means that the literature describing midlife has also expanded – and allowed writers to bring a new range of experiences into its orbit.