LA241 Booker Books: "The Rest of Our Lives," by Ben Markovitz

The Rest of Our Lives is a quiet, meticulously observed "state-of-the-nation" novel that transforms the standard mid-life crisis into a profound meditation on the "slow erosion of the will". The story follows Tom Layward, a fifty-five-year-old law professor who has spent twelve years harboring a secret resolution: to leave his wife, Amy, the moment their youngest child leaves for college. After dropping his daughter off at university in Pittsburgh, Tom chooses not to return to his New York home, instead continuing to drive west in a "vague, peripatetic" quest to revisit the ghosts of his past.

Moving across the American landscape from New Jersey to California, the narrative is structured around Tom’s encounters with old flames, estranged friends, and his own brother, punctuated by pickup basketball games where he briefly recaptures his youthful vitality. Yet, beneath the familiar tropes of the American road novel lies a deeper, more clinical tension: Tom is keeping secrets not only from his wife but from himself, including a looming career crisis and a mysterious, worsening medical condition that he refuses to acknowledge. Markovits employs a "disarmingly plain-speaking" voice to peel back the layers of a thirty-year "C-minus marriage," exploring how resentment and love can exist in the same stagnant air.

Often compared to the works of Richard Ford and John Updike, The Rest of Our Lives is a "wry, poignant" study of masculine vulnerability and the "unreliable edges" of self-narration. A strong discussion angle for the group is Tom’s insistence on "grading" his life and relationships—and whether his cross-country flight is a rational pursuit of freedom or a desperate, pathological retreat from a reality he can no longer control.

Shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize.

Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered by one week prior to the meeting, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

Registration for the April meeting opens on Saturday, 28 March.