Q: What can I read to help me make a fresh start in life in the new year? I have just taken redundancy after working for the same company for 37 years.
Michael Prime, 53, former postman

A: Johanna Thomas-Corr, journalist and book critic:
“To make an end is to make a beginning,” wrote TS Eliot in the last of his Four Quartets, a lyrical meditation on the passing of time and the sadness of lives not fully lived. That might sound like the last thing you want to read as you unbox your fresh start, but it’s also rich with possibility. “We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

That, in a nutshell, is what happens in Felice Benuzzi’s bonkers jailbreak yarn, No Picnic on Mount Kenya. It’s the true story of three Italians who escaped an allied prisoner of war camp and climbed a 17,000ft mountain… only to sneak back into the camp. “Every step was a discovery, a new beginning,” Benuzzi says of their cheerfully outrageous quest.

In Life Reimagined: The Science, Art and Opportunity of Midlife, journalist Barbara Bradley Hagerty argues that “midlife is about renewal, not crisis”. Hagerty, who trained for a bike race in her mid-50s, says it’s best to pursue purpose over happiness.

The idea that a sheltered life only makes us more anxious is at the heart Happiness by Aminatta Forna, a novel about two middle-aged people, one American, one Ghanaian, trying to start anew. It’s full of unexpected connections and joie de vivre. There’s a world out there and it’s calling you.

Finally, turn to Philip Larkin’s The Trees, which, as spring approaches, will help you turn over a new leaf: “Yet still the unresting castles thresh/ In fullgrown thickness every May/ Last year is dead, they seem to say/ Begin afresh, afresh, afresh”.

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