The Rest of Our Lives, Ben Markovits
We meet Tom Layward, narrator of The Rest of Our Lives, at a fork in his life. Twelve years have passed since he made a deal with himself to leave his wife, once his youngest child had gone to college. Now he finds himself facing this possibility and, compounded by a suspension from work, he is increasingly adrift in a world that’s changing faster than he can keep up with.
With elements of both the campus novel and the road trip novel, Markovits expertly takes us on a journey through landscapes and relationships that feel outgrown, but nostalgic and intimate. Markovits’ style of prose is relatable and engaging and, as Tom is driving for much of the book, the novel plays out like a conversation we imagine we’re having next to him in the car; we listen in on the memories and tangential anecdotes filling out the wider picture of Tom’s life – both the one has built for himself and the one his wife has built alongside him.
There is a tenderness in the growing distance between himself and Amy. Tom spends a lot of time thinking about his wife once he has ostensibly left her. Whilst at home, there was tension in the proximity, bickering at family BBQs and disagreements over the suitability of their daughter Miriam’s boyfriend. Tom’s journeys also have an adolescent charm to them – he exists mostly on fritos and Dr Pepper whilst trying to navigate to the closest Walmart without GPS to buy fresh underwear.
Set in the shadow of the Covid19 pandemic, Tom’s health is worsening and, whilst he still jogs and plays basketball (a recurring narrative feature for long term readers of Markovits; himself once a professional player), he attributes his worsening symptoms to Long Covid. However, when a drastic decline forces him to reconsider how safe he will be on his own, it is his family who he leans on for support. The novel is compassionate in its explorations of the small disappointments and regrets we harbour in lieu of larger confrontations, choosing a life that appears happy instead of one that actually is. There is an aching observation that ‘nobody tells you what an intense experience loneliness is and how it has a lot of variations, just hour by hour.’
Markovits has said it is ‘nicer to write about people who feel like they’re failures than to write about people who just think they’re the greatest.’ Tom, in a distinctly relatable way, measures his life by his failures and, in turn, believes his daughter has grown up with ‘inadequate’ parenting. Whilst he debates his own responsibility for his wife’s affair, he worries that leaving her will only force his children to feel the same anguish he felt at his own father’s departure. There is passivity to Tom that’s frustrating at times but, given the opportunity to act in his own interests for the first time in years, his choices reflect not a desire for independence, but for more meaningful connections than the ones he has been enduring.
The Rest of Our Lives reckons with the belief that we are complicit in our own disappointment and that resentment can be a self fulfilling prophecy. Whilst not wanting to lose the rest of his life, Tom begins to realise that it is stability that comforts him, not stagnation that frightens him.
Editorial Picks
