The Rest of Our Lives

An unhappy family man takes stock of his life in Markovits’s superb road novel (after The Sidekick), which was recently shortlisted for the Booker Prize. At 55, New York City law professor Tom Layward decides to make good on a promise he made to himself 12 years earlier: to leave his wife, Amy, once they became empty nesters. Back then, she confessed to her affair with a man from their synagogue. Now, after dropping off their daughter, Miri, at college in Pittsburgh, Tom, who’s also dealing with long Covid, continues west, having nowhere to go since he was placed on leave for refusing to sign department emails with his preferred pronouns. Along the way, he reunites with family, friends, and exes, and entertains an opportunity to consult on a dubious case alleging white discrimination in the NBA. Unlike in other fiction about contemporary America’s culture wars and generational divides, Markovits endows his hero not with righteous grievance but with tenderness and wry self-reflection, as Tom gamely tries to see himself through others’ eyes (“Angry white male,” Miri calls him, whenever she thinks he’s “trying to be controversial”) and contends with his mortality. What starts as an understated chronicle of wanderlust swells to something more powerful and permanent. Agent: Barry Harbaugh, WLA. (Dec.)