“Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark,” Solnit advises. “That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.” Easy enough to write, you may say, but Solnit didn’t have the easiest childhood herself, growing up “a battered little kid” in a violent home.

For something that asks a little less of the reader while still giving plenty in return, try a dose of Anne Tyler, the beloved creator of numerous protagonists whose plights will strike a chord with anyone who finds themselves at a midlife impasse. One such character is 53-year-old Rebecca Davitch, the heroine of Back When We Were Grownups. Like you, she’s juggled marriage and motherhood with a career but suddenly finds herself feeling lonely in her own home. Could it be, she wonders, that she’s “turned into the wrong person”? Don’t be fooled by the way this novel ambles along – as Rebecca revisits youthful ambitions and the college boyfriend she jilted, it asks some heart-rending questions before arriving at a place of graceful, joyous acceptance.

Along similar lines, I’m also going to recommend The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce, which will double as a tonic for those reclusive tendencies you mention. Its eponymous protagonist is 65 when he learns that a former colleague is sick. On his way to post her an insipid note, he decides instead to visit her – on foot, from his home in deepest Devon to England’s northernmost town, more than 600 miles away. You don’t manage that without focus! It’s a pilgrimage that will take him 87 days to complete, during which he considers his childhood, marriage and relationship with his son, and becomes an accidental media sensation. By the time he reaches his destination, you’ll feel anything but weary.

Finally, Ruth Ozeki’s mesmerising novel A Tale for the Time Being is probably too subtle to deliver that proverbial kick you’re after, but there’s a strong chance it will charm the missing spark back into your life. Fusing the diary of a doleful Tokyo teenager with the story of the middle-aged novelist who finds it, washed ashore on a remote island off the coast of British Columbia, it’s a beautiful illustration of how our lives touch – and are touched by – others in ways we mightn’t even be aware of. This Man Booker Prize finalist has plenty to teach about Zen Buddhism, bullying and quantum mechanics, and unless you happen to live in one of its settings, it provides a bracing change of scene, too.

One other suggestion: books, as we all know, make great companions but that doesn’t mean they can’t be enjoyed in the company of others. If you find yourself home alone, why not slip one into your back pack and head out to a favourite café.

Hello Textual Healing,

First of all, thank you SO much for the article you published in the BBC Culture section of your website on 6 January, it was a joy to read and I confess, already made me feel better and resulted in the first genuine smile of the day.

I would love to be prescribed books for loneliness and feeling stuck in a rut. I'll start with the second ailment first – I know I should change my job, challenge myself more, work in a field I really enjoy, but the trouble is, my current job pays really well, and I'm worried about the uncertainty of the future. I guess I need to be given a little more courage to take the leap I know is needed.

The loneliness issue – I'll hazard a guess I am far from the only one feeling this way in the world. I have lots of friends. I remember a saying that, if you have someone to whom you can tell your dreams, you can't call yourself lonely, and I have those kinds of people, I really do. What I feel is missing is the physical presence element. The moment when you turn around and want to catch someone's hand and say, "Hey, look at this."

NH

Dear NH,

There’s a lovely quote from that same Solnit book for you, too: “Fear of making mistakes can itself become a huge mistake, one that prevents you from living, for life is risky and anything less is already loss,” she writes. But that fear is deeply human and sometimes, change has to be forced upon us. For the heroine of Anna Quindlen’s Still Life With Breadcrumbs, its agent is a plummeting bank balance. Having made a name for herself early on as an art photographer, Rebecca (I know, another Rebecca) now finds herself with aging parents, a reputation as a has-been and an apartment she can no longer afford. To buy some time, she rents out the apartment and heads to a flimsy cabin in the middle of nowhere just as winter arrives. It seems like a disastrous decision to begin with, but it will turn out to be one of the best she’s ever made, making her realise that she’s long outgrown her New York. Without spoiling it for you, I can also reveal that she meets that someone whose hand she can catch. And guess what? He’s no one she’d ever have envisaged. Hope in this smart novel is grounded and grown-up but madly contagious all the same.

You can’t hurry love but as the Quindlen novel shows, getting out of that rut and making sure you’re living the right life can help put you in the right place at the right time. Happily, it sounds like you’ve none of Rebecca’s financial worries to force you to make that leap, so in case inspiration alone doesn’t do the trick, I’m also adding a tiny dose of fear. Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs is an angry howl of a novel about a primary school teacher and thwarted artist whose safe, diligent decisions have left her life a meagre thing. When she falls recklessly in love with the bohemian family of one of her pupils, you know it can’t end well – nor does it.

Finding a job that challenges you should help you be more fully yourself, and this will increase your chances of attracting someone who’s right for you. In the meantime, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s You Should Have Known might make you thankful for being single a while longer. It centres on Grace Sachs, a marriage counsellor who’s so confident of her own domestic bliss she’s even written an advice book on the subject.

It’s in the run-up to publication that things begin unravelling. First the mother of a child at her son’s private school is murdered, then her husband disappears. Watching her immaculate world crumble is horribly compelling.

Lastly, I’m prescribing you a life-enhancing epic whose themes include the imperfection of marriage, and whose author once declared, “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” I mean, of course, Middlemarch by George Eliot. Pay extra close attention to its spry heroine Dorothea Brooke: she has many failings but lack of courage certainly isn’t among them.

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