In the opening scene of Annie de Monchaux’s novel Audrey Goes Awol, coming this month, the eponymous Audrey tells her therapist “I got married, had children, and then became invisible. It suited everyone, until it didn’t.”

De Monchaux describes the book as “a coming of middle-age story where one woman approaches her sense of invisibility in plain sight”. As with Tilda, Audrey’s character arc involves reckoning with the injustices of feeling old and overlooked before finding hope for new ways to live once you’ve aged off the social script.

“I think we all agree that invisibility is a feeling,” de Monchaux says. “It probably emanates from our limbic region along with fight and flight.” She thinks that women particularly fade from view at the intersection of ageing and motherhood.

“When you have [children] you are putting one, two, three, however many people into the space where there used to be one. You might find you don’t have a place in your own life. After children you find your voice again. Instead of saying, ‘Don’t put the banana in the CD player,’ you start to say more interesting things. You’ve suddenly got more time but everyone is just walking by you. You’re covered in wrinkles. You’re no longer interesting.”

“At this age you discover that doing isn’t being … I think it’s a tremendous time to be authentic and happy Annie de Monchaux

This perception, Bolton believes, is why even older writers shy from writing older characters, despite the “sea of grey hair” at writer’s festivals. “They think, ‘I’m too old to be interesting. If I’m not interesting, then why would a book about my life be interesting?’”

For de Beauvoir, the problem of ageing was not only interesting but inherently political, demanding collective action. “It is to the interest of the exploiting class to destroy the solidarity between the workers and the unproductive old,” she wrote.

But in the neoliberal scenes of de Monchaux and Tara’s novels, no one’s overthrowing the capitalistic structures and patriarchal logic that dehumanises them; the protagonists turn to therapy, self-love and meditation instead. Tilda gets a haircut and a new ’fit. Audrey goes to France and has a blast. They both hang out more with their friends. The most important thing, according to these books, isn’t to fight the power but to keep living your best life despite it.

It’s a resolution that fits with their authors’ experiences. While ageism is real, and invisibility creeps up, they want everyone to remember there’s still fun to be had. “At this age you discover that doing isn’t being,” de Monchaux says. “You get rid of lists, perhaps, where you measured the value of your day. So I think it’s a tremendous time to be authentic and happy. It’s not better but it’s as good.”

Tara says: “In the last 10 years I’ve gone on this journey where I’ve seen myself for the first time.” Like Tilda, she needed to feel she was disappearing to look at life from another angle.