[In the following excerpt, Bader offers a tempered assessment of Age.]

“I suppose most couples the age of Rupert and me are not expected to be still compelled by sex,” writes Hortense Calisher. But Gemma and Rupert (he, seventy-three and she, seventy-seven) have little time for the supposed-to-bes and the process of graceful aging. Thirty-five years into their marriage, they still surprise and baffle one another. Sometimes their anger comes through, but more often, joy, reveling in one another’s being—physically, yes, but also emotionally and intellectually. Whether our witness is to their shared laughter or pain or to their mundane or worldly talk, we are privy to the special relationship they have worked so hard to create.

In a series of short, alternating chapters, we are taken inside the soul and psyche of each partner. We enter, for example, into that heart of hearts where lust for life competes with dreaded death, where terror is a constant companion. But fear of one’s own death is not so frightening; rather, both Gemma and Rupert fear the aloneness that will follow the other’s passing. …

[Alice] Adams introduces us to a special group of people [in her novel Second Chances] and, like Calisher, zeros in on the concerns and challenges they face. Both novels make us care passionately about the characters; both provide role models to emulate as we grow older. And perhaps most important, both show us the precarious balance involved in preserving dearly held behaviors while growing, changing, and moving forward. …

Despite the novels’ similarities, Second Chances is the more engrossing, more resonant book. Age is full of insight, with wonderfully constructed sentences and vivid imagery, but it lacks the cohesion of a well-defined plot. Although some scenes lack certainty and others seem contrived, the book is filled with brilliant, quirky statements and passionate ideas. Read together, these books expand the world a little bit, helping us look in the mirror, refreshed and proud, gratefully accepting the gray hairs and wrinkles as our triumph.