Amortality: The Pleasures and Perils of Living Agelessly

by Catherine Mayer

A timely, provocative book about the aging revolution and the radical shift in how we perceive age and growing older Does your real age match the age you feel? When do we reach middle age? When, if ever, are we old? The way we age and the way we perceive age has changed radically. As we embrace new experiences, relationships, and gadgets, we barely stop to look at our watches let alone consider whether our behavior is "age appropriate." In this provocative and timely book, Catherine Mayer looks at the forces that created amortality—the term she coined to describe the phenomenon of living agelessly. As she follows this social epidemic through generations and across continents, she reveals its profound impact on society, our careers, our families, and ourselves. Why be defined by numbers? Are you amortal?

Genres: Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published May 12, 2011

About the author

Catherine Mayer is an author, journalist, activist and speaker. Her novel TIME/LIFE was published in hardback by Renard Press and as an audiobook by HarperCollins on 9 April 2025, with the paperback and ebook launching on 14 May 2025. Her next nonfiction title, Send Them Victorious: Royal Women, Their Battles and Why We Should Care, is scheduled for publication by HarperCollins in March 2026.

Her books include the best-selling biography of King Charles III, Charles: The Heart of King (first published 2015, new edition 2022): and Amortality: The Pleasures and Perils of Living Agelessly (2011), Attack of the Fifty Foot Women: How Gender Equality Can Save the World! (March 2017, paperback Feb 2018) and, with her mother Anne Mayer Bird, Good Grief: Embracing Life at a Time of Death (Dec 2020, paperback Feb 2022). She also contributed to Dear NHS (2020) and Poems that Make Grown Women Cry (2016).

She co-founded the Women’s Equality Party in 2015 and served as its president until December 2024. She is also a co-founder of Primadonna Festival.

She started her career in journalism at The Economist, went on to hold deputy editorships at Business Traveller and International Management magazines and contributed regularly to the German edition of Forbes. For 11 years she worked as a London-based correspondent for the German news weekly, FOCUS. In 2004, she joined TIME as a senior editor, and later became London Bureau Chief, Europe Editor and, finally, Editor at Large.

She ran a data and technology think tank, has written and performed one-woman shows, a two-hander with Grayson Perry, and a theatrical piece for the Globe Theatre, stood as a candidate in the 2019 European elections, has served as President of the Foreign Press Association in London and as a judge for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and co-curated the 2020 Festival of Death. She is on the founding committee of WOW-the Women of the World Festival. She has won awards for her journalism and her activism.

Since the death of her husband, the musician Andy Gill, she has released two EPs by his band Gang of Four, executive-produced the tribute album, The Problem of Leisure: A celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four, and manages his music estate.

Reviews

[Martin Raybould · Rating 2 out of 5]

A halfway interesting magazine article padded out to book length.

[Ed Crutchley · Rating 5 out of 5]

One wonders what inspired Catherine Mayer to discover herself amortal and write this rich, intelligent, amusing and fascinating book. She married into rock, notorious for its ageless practitioners, and maybe the answer lies there. Early on she quotes the Ampleforth school head who jokingly described his job as preparing his boys for death, and from then on she very thoroughly darts around quite the opposite theme. This is about the growing number of fish who defy the river current and turn in the opposite direction. Someone once said that happiness is when we ignore the past and cease to worry about the future, and Mayer’s very thorough analysis seems to prove the point. As increasing liberties, opportunities, not to mention IQ’s, have pollinated a Me-generation eagerly making the most of life and least of death, the teenager phenomenon born in the 1940’s has, often with a bit of cosmetic and therapeutic help, metamorphosed into a trait spanning more and more peoples’ entire lifetimes. The book is riddled with fascinating references to often surprising social changes defying tradition as well as prime examples of past and present amortals, people who have remained cognitively young throughout their lives. They are apparently not particularly children-prone. One side effect has been population decline. There has been an inverse correlation between birth rate and life span. 49% of European households occupied by couples have no children staying in them; the Russian abortion rate approaches the birth rate of that country; declining birth rates in western countries appear due to potential mothers holding off and then having to battle age-declining fertility in order to conceive. My only reservation was that the book seemed to peter out right at the end. Or was it me? Still a good read.

[Vicky · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a new generation of "young- aged” amongst us, they are up for anything that is challenging. They are fit, smart and adventurous. They live longer, have masses of energy and expect to stay healthy for much longer than the previous generation. They take up scuba-diving at 70 and open new on-line businesses after retirement. The world is theirs for the taking. The whole concept of “amortality” is rejection of the traditional life style based on families and extended families. The amortals are selfish, narcissistic and live for themselves. They have their own blend of spiritual ideas that they mix and match to suit them and they date on-line. They use plastic surgery; they exercise a lot and eat right. Basically they create a new social network based on people with similar interests. There is a strong belief in their circles that science soon will provide them with the answer for longevity. They believe that a “fountain of youth” is near to explore. If it sounds familiar read an “Amortality: the pleasures and perils of living agelessly” by Catherine Mayer.

[Peter O'Brien · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Amortals have plenty of attitude. In our assumptions of agelessness and blindness towards age, we crisscross a fine line between resilience and denial, optimism and absurdity" - page 261.

The main problem I had with this book is that all the main points it covered I had already encountered in prior reading and research, so I did not gain anything new from this book, but that was my problem.

However, if you are looking to provide yourself with an introduction to the issue of amortality and how to go about living with an ageless mentality then this book is the place to start.

Catherine Mayer is a highly knowledgeable writer who uses her own life and many people she knows to illustrate the many points of the research this book collects together in what is essentially a manifesto on how to go implementing an ageless existence.

Thought-provoking and very much needed for the times we live in.

[Inga Narijauskienė · Rating 3 out of 5]

Buvo įdomu perskaityti :)

"Apibūdindama nemirtinguosius, paaiškinau, kad išskirtinis jų bruožas yra tai, jog "nuo atsisveikinimo su paauglyste iki mirties jie gyvena taip pat, puodelėja tuos pačius siekius, dažniausiai daro ir naudoja tuos pačius dalykus."

[Nico Macdonald]

Reviewed on Start the Week, BBC Radio 4, 30 May 2011