HAGS: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women, published at the start of March, has enjoyed some incredible reviews and ratings.

Described as a ‘vital’ book by Lissa Evans, HAGS explores and analyses the misogyny and sexism that middle-aged women experience. For those who don’t know, Victoria Smith is a feminist writer, contributing regularly to the Critic. She often writes on topics including ageism, misogyny, and motherhood. With it being three months since publication, now is as good a time as ever to reflect on some of the publicity it has received.

In the build-up to publication, HAGS received fantastic reviews. Janice Turner in The Times described HAGS as ‘eloquent, clever and devastating’, while Rachel Cooke described it as a ‘future classic, up there with Joan Smith’s Misogynies and Susan Falueid’s Backlash’ in The Observer. In the Mail on Sunday, HAGS was noted as ‘devastating and clever’, and Unherd described Smith as ‘very funny’.

In the first week of being published, it reached #15 in the Sunday Times Bestseller list and made it into the Top 25 Indie Bookshop Champions.

More recently, HAGS was #12 in Amazon most sold non-fiction list and reached #4 in the Kindle store on May 13^th while on offer for twenty-four hours. Lisa Allardice mentions Smith’s HAGS in her article on menopause literature while discussing the fun of ‘subverting the cliches of menopausal women’ in fiction centring middle-age female characters.

All in all, we’ve seen some wonderful reviews before publication day and amazing rankings once HAGS was out for the world to read, and it continues to receive fantastic praise.