It's easy to say "It's never too late." But Helen Yglesias not only said it, she also proved it by sitting down at the age of 54 and writing the novel "How She Died," which she had been promising herself she would write ever since she was an adolescent. Moreover, in her third book and first work of nonfiction ["Starting: Early, Anew, Over, and Late"] she goes several steps further. She tries to figure out what made it so difficult for her to do what she had always wanted to do. And she tries to wrest from her difficulties universal meaning….

She would first write a fragment of an autobiography….

In the telling of this story, she would discover many of the obstacles that stand in the way of anyone's self-fulfillment—such obstacles as parental disapproval, the pressures of having to earn a living or raise a family, the...