Q: I am retired, happily married, and have lived in my small town for more than 25 years. I’m bored now. What books would you recommend to inspire me to make the most of the years to come?
Former teacher, 60
A: Nicci Gerrard, an author and journalist who also writes with her husband, Sean French, as Nicci French, writes:
There should be a different word for retirement, one that doesn’t imply withdrawal and a kind of placid settling (being bored perhaps), but adventure, change and new possibilities. There are so many wondrous books that swing open doors on to different worlds.
Penelope Fitzgerald is a shining example of someone whose 60s were a time of renewal. She published her first book at 58, her first novel at 60. Her last, The Blue Flower, came out when she was 80, five years before her death. It’s the historical novel at its most supple, with gifts on every page.
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner offers transformation. I don’t want to give away the lovely twist at its heart, but it starts out as a funny, sharp, eccentric novel about a middle-aged spinster living a dull, dutiful life in London between the wars, and halfway through turns on a hinge to become something entirely different. It’s blissful, euphoric and a passionate cry for freedom and joy.
Another type of freedom and solace is offered by WG Sebald’s Rings of Saturn, in which Sebald walks the melancholy Suffolk coast and allows his mind to wander, simultaneously inhabiting the present and the past, landscape and memory. It’s a glorious and disorienting book, impassive and dreamy and showing the extraordinary reach of the human mind.
For a different kind of inspiration, how about Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees, which makes you look again at the giants of nature we pass each day and feel awe at the natural world. Oh, and then Food for Free, Richard Mabey’s life-enhancing and practical foraging guide.
The much-missed American poet Mary Oliver writes beautifully about nature (and dogs) and beautifully about being no longer young, the adventures of getting old. “Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable,” she says, and: “I say to my heart: rave on.”
The Lying Room by Nicci French is published by Simon & Schuster (£14.99)
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