BEST BOOKS FOR...

MIDLIFE LOVE

THE author and scriptwriter of TV hit Victoria suggests novels to help you through the trickier times. IT REALLY is never too late to fall in love. I have two friends who found the love of their life in their 40s at a point when they had reconciled themselves to a lifetime of singledom. Both were dumbfounded by their good luck. But fiction is a great road map for late love.

One of the most surprising love stories is found in U.S. writer Elizabeth Strout’s great novel Olive Kitteridge.

Set in a seaside town in Maine, it’s the story of Olive, a retired maths teacher, who despite a difficult manner, touches the lives of everyone she meets.

We learn through a series of linked short stories that her marriage has not been entirely happy, and she has a complicated relationship with her son.

When her husband has a stroke, Olive is at the care home every day. When he dies she feels there is no point left to her existence. She gets through her days by going for long walks by the river. One day she finds a man her age collapsed on the path. He is a man she has always disliked, even though she didn’t know him, but his plight moves her to compassion. He recovers and she discovers that he has been widowed. Together and with much mutual prickliness they find consolation and finally love.

It is a wonderful reminder that love blossoms in the rockiest places.

But falling in love later in life can render you vulnerable as Daisy, the selfsufficient heroine of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s autobiographical novel, Falling, finds when she meets the charming Harry Kent. At first she thinks he is too good to be true, but she is so happy she abandons her natural caution.

Harry does turn out to be a dangerous conman and Daisy is left alone once again. Being grown-up doesn’t mean you are impervious to heartbreak.

And finally to prove we all want to believe passion can strike at any age, Robert James Waller’s The Bridges Of Madison Country about a four-day affair between a middle-aged married woman and a photographer who comes to document the covered bridges near her home became one of the bestselling books of the 20th century.

Like Brief Encounter, it is one of those unforgettable stories, that though tragic, gives us a beguiling glimpse of romantic possibility.