Tom Layward is a lawyer. He didn’t set out wanting to be a lawyer, but in the end it seemed the safest option: easier than following his ambition to play professional basketball, more secure than his other pipe dream, to become a writer. Thirty years down the line, Tom is married to Amy. Their son Michael has left home, their daughter Miriam is about to go to college. Tom has been asked to take a sabbatical from his law firm while a delicate workplace situation is resolved. He has not told Amy, though. Twelve years earlier, Amy had a brief affair with a guy she knew from synagogue. The Laywards’ relationship has been in emotional limbo ever since. After dropping Miri off at college, Tom keeps driving. His plans are vague. Perhaps he’ll go and see his brother, Eric. As for what happens after that, he’s undecided.
The Rest of Our Lives is pure reading pleasure – if it were a car, you’d say it handles like a dream. There are no bad guys in this book (except for the racist, conspiracy-theorist basketball player Tom briefly meets with – and silently rejects – as a possible client) but that’s the point.
I thought, what if I moved in with Jill and became friends with these people, so that the last thirty years of our lives turned out to be just an interruption. Would Katie eventually think of me as her father? The thought made me… It wasn’t even a feeling of guilt, it was a deeper horror than that. (Miri, Michael.) I don’t even mean that it seemed impossible, because this is basically what my dad did. There’s almost nothing you can’t do to yourself, that’s what I thought. And whatever it is, you’ll probably survive and maybe even end up happier than you were before. But that doesn’t make it less terrible.
I don’t often read novels like this these days. But when I happen to stumble upon one as good as this, I feel a quiet, deep-seated joy that there are still writers out there who are capable of this kind of solid, no-frills, intelligent, introspective, perfectly executed, honest, old-fashioned writing. The Rest of Our Lives could almost be a Philip Roth novel, only without the sexism and merciless egotism. Markovits is less biting, less frenetic, possibly because he is more self aware. Certainly more aware of women. Alive and attentive to the world through which he moves.
This book does nothing new. It is just a very good book. I have loved my time with Tom and with Amy, Michael, Miri, Eric, Jill, Betty and Brian, the complex, immersive network of their friendships and problems. The Rest of Our Lives is an engrossing, involving novel of character: restrained, reflective, nourishing, and not a word out of place.
Could it be a contender?
Ideologically, I’d probably argue against it, because it doesn’t challenge. But if Markovits won, I’d say good on him, and be secretly pleased.