This past week I read The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits. It was short-listed for The Booker Prize in 2025. It’s fairly short as novels go these days, just 229 pages. The main character, Tom Layward, is in his mid-50s and at a crossroads in his life, though for the first half of the book he doesn’t realize it. After driving his daughter to college for her first year away from home, he suddenly finds himself embarking on a road trip cross-country with no prior planning, visiting people who once were important in his life, pondering their connections with his current life. He’s confused about his relationship with his wife, which appears to be unraveling, but Tom is not a complainer, not a whiner, nor does he over-analyze. That’s for the reader to do!  He’s not into angst per se. He’s exploring the past and himself as he is now, and as he was growing up, in his 20s, and after his marriage. The novel is conversational, with plenty of dialogue, but more than that, Tom is in continual dialogue with himself, or is trying to be. 

I found this a compelling read, especially so given the riveting conclusion, and blessedly brief, which makes it sound as though I didn’t enjoy it. I did enjoy it, but Markovits’s approach to the novel could not have borne 400 pages, and it’s a much better book for its brevity.  

I did not choose it because it was on the Booker Shortlist; in fact, I didn’t know it was until I opened the box. Oddly, I’ve now read three books that were on that shortlist; the other two being Audition by Katie Kitamura and The Land in Winter by the British writer Andrew Miller. I’ll be frank—I did not “get” Audition. It did not resonate with me on any level whatsoever. It, too, is a short novel. Have you read it? I would love to hear other opinions.

I was attracted to The Land in Winter because it is set in England during the historic harsh winter of 1962-1963. That aspect of the novel intrigued me, when the setting becomes an important character and catalyst in the novel. I was interested in the characters, two couples, very different from each other, living in the rural West of England. Because they live on adjoining landed properties, the brutal winter makes them interact, and forces them to be closer than they otherwise would have been—yet they have little in common. I enjoyed reading it, but towards the end, the events that unfolded were very strange, to the point of being downright bizarre. The plot then steers back on course—very different.