2025 Booker Prize (shortlist)
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
FINALIST FOR THE 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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
FINALIST FOR THE 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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"A deft, agile, intricate portrait of family life and midlife crisis, razor-sharp insights delivered with a throwaway lightness of touch . . . A perfect contemporary take on the American road-trip novel." - Lucy Caldwell
"Completely involving and so funny, wise and knowing about midlife disappointment and the melancholy compromises of marriage. I hope it gets all the praise and readers it deserves." - Clare Chambers
"Pitch perfect in its first-hand delivery, its faithful depiction of the small failings and misfortunes of a life, The Rest of Our Lives resonates gloriously and sometimes momentously with our own." - Jane Feaver
"What an excellent novel about the rich, accumulated layers of marriage. The fissures and precious moments, the embedded resentments and tenderness in the relationship of Tom and Amy, it all forms such a real and complex portrait." - Sarah Hall
"Completely involving and so funny, wise and knowing about midlife disappointment and the melancholy compromises of marriage. I hope it gets all the praise and readers it deserves." - Clare Chambers
"Pitch perfect in its first-hand delivery, its faithful depiction of the small failings and misfortunes of a life, The Rest of Our Lives resonates gloriously and sometimes momentously with our own." - Jane Feaver
"What an excellent novel about the rich, accumulated layers of marriage. The fissures and precious moments, the embedded resentments and tenderness in the relationship of Tom and Amy, it all forms such a real and complex portrait." - Sarah Hall
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Used availability for Benjamin Markovits's The Rest of Our Lives