The author beautifully evokes the everyday pleasures and niggling troubles of four friends in their later years

Old age is one long painful process of “incremental weakening”, writes the American novelist Stewart O’Nan in Evensong, his moving story of four elderly Pittsburgh ladies who find solace in assisting others. Emily, Arlene, Kitzi and Susie are core members of the Humpty Dumpty Club, an informal group of women who help friends and neighbours with the practicalities, indignities and relentless admin bound up with one’s final years: collecting prescriptions, ordering groceries, offering lifts to hospital appointments and, eventually, making the inevitable funeral arrangements.

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