The Rest of Our Lives A Novel

Craig Brewer's new film is Song Sung Blue. Ben Markowitz's novel, The Rest of Our Lives, was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize and has just been published in the U.S. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan says it's the perfect little literary novel to curl up with, especially if winter weather has you feeling cooped up.

Tom Layward, the narrator and main character of Ben Markowitz's new novel, The Rest of Our Lives, introduces himself in a curious way. On the very first page of the book, he talks matteroffactly about the affair his wife Amy had 12 years ago when their two kids were young.

Twelve years have since passed, and the marriage has settled back into a state of okayness. Miriam, now 18, is starting college in Pittsburgh, and because Amy is having a tough time with Miriam's departure, Tom alone drives her to campus. And once Tom drops Miriam off, he just keeps driving westward without explanation to us or to himself.

There's a strain of Richard Ford and John Updike in Tom's tone, which I mean as a high compliment. The novel balances wry, mournful, and casually astute narration while delivering an engaging roadtrip story.

The canon of roadtrip 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 easytomiss signposts, marking life forks in the road and looming mortality that make the journey itself everything.