Rather than a collection of stories about late starters, ["Starting: Early, Anew, Over, and Late"] is an assemblage of oral histories based on a self-evident premise, that "there are as many different aspects to starting as there are manifestations of being." This obviously being so, the book nonetheless lacks a clear thesis, because everyone who manages to stay alive for any length of time starts something, late or early, or starts again in midlife or later. There are, of course, some who never start at all, who drift through life without achieving what is now fatuously called "self-realization"—the expression, through a choice made sometime in life, of the inner self. But they are the only exceptions to the all-inclusive category of starters described here.

Though the whole is not clearly defined, some of the parts make very good reading, particularly Mrs. Yglesias' autobiographical fragments….

[The book is...