Editor’s Note: Ann La Farge was Executive Editor at Kensington Books for 15 years. She left her long-time publishing job to work as a book doctor and syndicated columnist. She lives in Millbrook, NY, where she writes for The Independent Online.

Egghead or airhead, admit it: It’s fun to read novels about “ourselves,” meaning others in our age group. Ten-year-olds devour Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and A Girl of the Limberlost; young marrieds choose Couples or The House of Mirth. But, until a recent surge of good novels about older women, those of us of a “certain age” were rarely celebrated in fine fiction. I sense that this is changing, albeit gradually, and there’s hope that, unlike Miss Havisham and Grace Poole, we will no longer be relegated to the attic.

As a 15-year book columnist for a chain of weekly newspapers, I am the happy recipient of review copies of almost everything, including many Jiffy-bag loads of books I have no interest in either reading or recommending to my readers. And even though my life – as English teacher, book editor and lavishly neglected novelist — is one long book club, I do belong to one of those, too. At our last monthly meeting, the ladies neatly eviscerated a book that I had chosen and loved, Maria Doria Russell’s just published Dreamers of the Day, then went on to bemoan the lack of good “domestic fiction” – preferably not set in Kabul – and to dither about next month’s selection. So maybe you don’t want to listen to me, either. But here goes.

I’ll start with my favorite novel of this season (actually a series of linked stories), Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. While other reviewers have pronounced the eponymous heroine unpleasant, crabby and unlikable, I found her wise, witty and unforgettable. Olive lives in a small Maine coastal town, and all the doings of that town are told through her perspective and with her commentary. If I had to choose a mother, Olive would be mine. If I had to choose a new identity, I’d be Olive. That’s what loving a book really comes down to.

I also want to sing the praises of the novel I read most recently (yesterday), Roxana Robinson’s Cost, in which a family that “lacks the gathering gene” is forced to come together in order to try to help a young son overcome heroin addiction. The grandparents – a crusty, domineering old surgeon and his gentle, dementia-stricken wife; their daughters, one an artist, one a veterinarian, neither liking the other much; the artist’s ex-husband; and her two sons. “Was it a cardinal virtue,” the visiting sister wonders, “being close to your family? What if your family [was] made up of people with whom you had little in common, whose company you didn’t enjoy?” This wonderful novel asks, and answers the question, “Can you ever truly escape your family?”

Indeed, I believe there is a trend here, so I’ll briefly mention a few more books that my fellow wowOwow fans may enjoy. Carol Cassella’s novel Oxygen is about an anesthesiologist faced with an operation that goes terribly wrong. When she takes a leave of absence from the hospital, she vows to grow closer to her father, reconnect with her sister and rekindle an old love.