‘What we obviously had, even when things smoothed over, was a C-minus marriage, which makes it pretty hard to score much higher than a B overall on the rest of your life’
The Rest of Our Lives
Written by Ben Markovits
- Shortlisted
- The Booker Prize 2025
- Published by Faber
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An unforgettable road trip of a novel about a middle-aged academic whose marriage, career and body are failing him
What’s left when your kids grow up and leave home?
When Tom Layward’s wife had an affair, he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest daughter turned 18. Twelve years later, while driving her to Pittsburgh to start university, he remembers his pact.
He is also on the run from his own health issues, and the fact that he’s been put on leave at work after students complained about the politics of his law class – something he hasn’t yet told his wife.
So, after dropping Miriam off, he keeps driving, with the vague plan of visiting various people from his past - an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son - on route, maybe, to his father’s grave in California.
Pitch perfect, quietly exhilarating and moving, The Rest of Our Lives is a novel about family, marriage and those moments which may come to define us.
The Rest of Our Lives was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025.
It’s matter of fact, effortlessly warm, and it uses the smallest parts of human behaviour to uphold bigger themes, like mortality, sickness, and love
The Booker Prize 2025 judges
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What the judges said
‘When Tom Layward’s wife cheated on him, he stayed for the children but promised to leave when his youngest turned eighteen. Twelve years later, Tom drops his daughter off at college, but instead of driving back to New York he heads west. What follows is a remarkably satisfying road trip full of strangers, friends, and self-discovery. It’s clear author Ben Markovits has spent time teaching. This novel speaks like a much-loved professor, one whose classes have a terribly long waitlist. It’s matter of fact, effortlessly warm, and it uses the smallest parts of human behaviour 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.’
What the critics said
Alex Preston, Guardian
‘The Rest of Our Lives is another quiet triumph, an elegant, devastating book that lays bare the way time calcifies our failures, how we find ourselves trapped not by circumstance but by the slow erosion of the will to escape. Markovits has long been one of our most under-appreciated novelists; this is yet more proof that he deserves far greater recognition.’
George Cochrane, Telegraph
‘Fluently written and effortlessly wise about families and middle age, it tells a compelling story that packs a serious emotional punch.’
Philip Womack, Times Literary Supplement
‘We all fear irrelevance as technology and society outpace us, and as the young outgrow us. Yet, reading Ben Markovits’s gentle, powerful and funny novel, we are reminded that family love can ground us and keep us together.’
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Reading guide: The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
- Book extract