The Rest of Our Lives, Ben Markovits

The novel follows Tom Layward, a law professor in his fifties living in New York, whose wife Amy had an affair years earlier. He vowed to leave her once their youngest child left home, and when that moment finally arrives, he drives his daughter to college in Pittsburgh and simply keeps going west, embarking on an unplanned cross-country road trip that carries him through encounters with old friends, an ex-lover, his brother, and his son. It seemed to me to be a meditation on family love and the fear of irrelevance…a story of a man whose marriage, career, and body are all quietly failing him at once.

The novel has many half-formed thoughts that achieve an undeniable realism but, for some, not much more than that. The book circles contemporary media and culture---cancel culture, COVID, the politics of identity, but without committing to any position on them, leaving a portrait of midlife crisis that feels observed but static. Markovits's writing is subtle and plainspoken, which draws you in.