Tom Layward, the narrator of Ben Markovits’ Booker finalist novel, “The Rest of Our Lives,” doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do.
He’s middle-aged (55) and on leave from his job as a law professor because of a student complaint about some content in his hate-crime course that is not exactly meritless but also would have been shrugged off earlier in his career. His youngest child, Miriam (Miri), is imminently heading to college at Carnegie Mellon. Miri’s departure is more meaningful because a dozen years earlier when his wife Amy had a brief affair with Zach Zirsky, he told himself that when Miri was out of the house, he could leave his wife.
That choice of “could” rather than “should” or “would” is an important window into where Tom finds himself after dropping Miri in Pittsburgh, and instead of heading back home to Westchester County, he goes west. Along the way, he stops in to see various important people: his brother, a college girlfriend, an old roommate, and lastly his son.
“The Rest of Our Lives” is billed as something of a road trip novel, and while Tom does span the country from coast to coast, the main terrain covered is the interior of his own mind, the choices made, the state of his marriage, and what may wait for him in what remains of his time.
Speaking of which, there’s another complication. Mornings when he wakes, his face is filled with fluid to the point he can barely see sometimes. A doctor has suggested it might be complications of long COVID-19, but everyone he encounters throughout the novel who sees him says he needs to go to the emergency room.
This is the kind of novel I’ve been told doesn’t get published anymore, a well-off white man with so-called “first world” problems edging toward a midlife crisis. When I was in my 30s, I gobbled these novels like candy — Richard Ford, John Updike, et al. — curious about what might await me.
But now, as a 55-year-old white man who sometimes wonders about what the rest of his life has for him and who has no interest in a midlife crisis for real or vicariously, I was skeptical of “The Rest of Our Lives.”
But I’m here to testify that I was thoroughly, completely won over by this book, which is in the best tradition of those novelists I was reading in my 30s. Tom Layward is no hero, but he clearly knows this about himself, and his reflective judgment on his choices (law school over a Ph.D. in literature) and the lives of others (Amy’s lasting ties to the society of coastal wealth she grew up) provide frequent flashes of insight and make him a great companion for the duration of the trip.
Most of what he experiences when connecting with others is awkward, even unsettling. For example, his divorced brother drinks too much and makes a bit of an ass of himself in an episode that Tom recognizes he’s allowing, if not exactly encouraging.
But these incidents are not played for high drama. They are fodder for thought and attempts at understanding the mystery of Tom’s life for himself.
Close readers will find a handful of clues that help explain this perspective, why he has settled into this reflective mode in the telling of his road trip. The culmination of the trip clarifies what Tom will be doing in the near term, but the long term will remain a mystery, as it must for all of us.
John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “Theo of Golden” by Allen Levi
2. “I Cheerfully Refuse” by Leif Enger
3. “Sunrise on the Reaping” by Suzanne Collins
4. “The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle” Stuart Turton
5. “Piranesi” by Susanna Clarke
— Karen W., LeRoy
A strict mystery isn’t necessarily central to this novel, but much of it is mysterious: “Fates and Furies” by Lauren Groff.
1. “Buckeye” by Patrick Ryan
2. “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” by Kiran Desai
3. “The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy
4. “Exit Wounds” by Peter Godwin
5. “James” by Percival Everett
— JoVita B., Lindenhurst
I think JoVita will enjoy the twisty moral issues of Alexander Maksik’s “You Deserve Nothing.”
1. “Greek Lessons” by Han Kang
2. “The Other Girl” by Annie Ernaux
3. “Heart Lamp” by Banu Mushtaq
4. “Audition” by Katie Kitamura
5. “The Art Thief” by Michael Finkel
— Iva F., Evanston
An international flavor to this list, so I’m recommending a novel that is written by an American author, but is rooted elsewhere: “The Italian Teacher” by Tom Rachman.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.
