The Rest of Our Lives - by Ben Markovits Hardcover

About the Book

"When Tom Layward's wife had an affair twelve years ago, he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest child left the nest. Now, while driving his college-bound daughter to Pittsburgh, he remembers his promise to himself. He is also on the run from his own health issues and a forced leave from work. So, rather than returning to his wife in Westchester, Tom keeps driving west, with the vague plan of visiting people from his past -- an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son -- en route, maybe, to California. He's moving towards a future he hasn't even envisioned yet while he considers his past and the choices he's made that have brought him to this particular present."--

Book Synopsis

FINALIST FOR THE 2025 BOOKER PRIZE

"Feels less like reading a novel and more like sitting in a car beside a dear friend as he navigates the road up ahead. A profoundly moving experience." --Ann Patchett

"Deeply human...a beautifully quiet and devastating book." --Sarah Jessica Parker

A triumphantly life-affirming road trip novel about marriage, middle-age, and a man at a crossroads in his life.

When Tom Layward's wife had an affair twelve years ago, he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest child left the nest. Now, while driving his college-bound daughter to Pittsburgh, he remembers his promise to himself. He is also on the run from his own health issues and a forced leave from work.

So, rather than returning to his wife in Westchester, Tom keeps driving west, with the vague plan of visiting people from his past--an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son--en route, maybe, to California. He's moving towards a future he hasn't even envisioned yet while he considers his past and the choices he's made that have brought him to this particular present. Pitch-perfect, tender, and keenly observed, The Rest of Our Lives is a story about what to do when the rest of your life is only just the beginning of your story.

Review Quotes

"By turns, wry, mournful and, oh-so-casually, astute....There's a strain of Richard Ford and John Updike in Tom's tone, which I mean as a high compliment....The canon of road trip stories in American literature is vast, even more so if you count other modes of transportation besides cars -- like, say, rafts. But, the most memorable road trips, like The Rest of Our Lives, notice the easy-to-miss signposts -- marking life forks in the road and looming mortality -- that make the journey itself everything."--Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air

"Very tender...articulate and engaging...grand in its modesty, plumbs the limits of the American dream, hinging smoothly on small interpersonal moments." --The New York Times

"Wry, poignant....captures something essential about what it means to be a disappointed and disappointing White man in modern-day America....Anyone willing to consider the thicket of fears, affections and recriminations that grows through the cracks of a long relationship will find in these pages an almost unbearable tenderness....captures the confessional cadences of regret and irony with such uncanny fidelity to actual speech that you'll expect to find beer stains on these pages...irresistible." --Washington Post

"Mr. Markovits is a prolific author...whose writing is restrained and plainspoken....The lack of adornments helps us see Tom laid bare. Stripped of his certainties, he achieves a raw kind of clarity." --Wall Street Journal

"Astute." --Boston Globe

"[A] moving probe of life, love, family and marriage across years and miles." --NPR.org

"The Rest of Our Lives woke me up and reminded me why I love reading and why I became a writer. There are books you admire and books you love but this one I admire and love in equal amounts and on top of that I am envious of it -- how can something this good be this much fun and pleasure to read?" --Charles Yu, National Book Award-winning author of Interior Chinatown

"This is what they call a road trip novel, but I call it a Homeric odyssey. It's delicious." --Adriana Trigiani

"[The Rest of Our Lives is] effortlessly warm, and it uses the smallest parts of human behavior to uphold bigger themes, like mortality, sickness, and love. The Rest of Our Lives is a novel of sincerity and precision. We found it difficult to put it down."
--The Booker Prize 2025 judges: Ayòbámi Adébáyò, Chris Power, Kiley Reid, Roddy Doyle and Sarah Jessica Parker

"An incredibly written book about all the big things in life--brought into focus by simply paying close attention to the little things. An instant classic of that beloved genre, the great American road trip. What a remarkable achievement."
--Isaac Fitzgerald, author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts

"Its astute and immediately re-readable observations makes this book hard to put down...keen and candid...The Rest of Our Lives takes a pointed look at the way we shape each other, both in interpersonal relationships and the community at large, and asks: When is it too late to live differently?"--San Francisco Chronicle

"It would be impossible to read The Rest of Our Lives without pleasure. Fluently written and effortlessly wise about families and middle age, it tells a compelling story that packs a serious emotional punch."
--George Cochrane, Telegraph

"[The Rest of Our Lives] is a book that has everything -- a clear line of plot, turbulently interesting narrator, themes both modern and timeless -- and feels like one of those books that, as you read, makes you think, "Why aren't all novels like this?"".
--John Self, Critic

"This compelling depiction of life at a crossroads is a male counterpart to Miranda July's All Fours."
--Marcel Theroux, Guardian

"A triumphant twist on the great American road novel...The Rest of Our Lives is another quiet triumph, an elegant, devastating book... Markovits has long been one of our most under-appreciated novelists; this is yet more proof that he deserves far greater recognition."
--Alex Preston, Guardian

"What makes The Rest of Our Lives so powerful is its restraint...the novel lingers in the mind, not for what it says outright, but for what it leaves unsaid."
--Ruby Eastwood, Irish Sunday Independent

"Markovits excels at family relationships: the things said and left unsaid.... Reading Ben Markovits's gentle, powerful and funny novel, we are reminded that family love can ground us and keep us together."
--Philip Womack, TLS

"Quiet and sweet and intimate." --Andrew Limbong, NPR

"A quiet, considered reflection on the complexities of life and love in middle age." --NPR

"This is what they call a road trip novel, but I call it a Homeric odyssey. It's delicious." --Adriana Trigiani

"Notably nuanced....This controlled, quietly moving portrait of a life in decline coasts to a halt in an unexpected place."--Kirkus Reviews (STARRED)

"Superb....What starts as an understated chronicle of wanderlust swells to something more powerful and permanent." --Publishers Weekly (STARRED)

"Well-crafted, introspective...an affecting, memorable read." --Booklist

About the Author

Ben Markovits was born in Texas and grew up there and in London and Berlin. He studied at Yale University and the University of Oxford. After graduating, he became a professional basketball player in Landshut, Germany (where he played against a young Dirk Nowitzki). His eleven previous novels include Fathers and Daughters, You Don't Have to Live Like This, and The Sidekick. He has published essays, stories, poetry, and reviews in The Guardian, Granta, The Paris Review, and The New York Times, among others. In 2013, Granta selected him as one of their Best of Young British Novelists and in 2015 he won the Eccles British Library Writer in Residence Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He lives in London and teaches creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.