Taking an Alternate Route

IN BEN MARKOVITS'S "The Rest of Our Lives" (S&S/ Summit, 240 pages, $28), the narrator, Tom Layward, confides an unflattering phrase that runs through his thoughts: "the heavy tread of middle age on the family stairs."

- SAM SACKS

Tom has reached an age when he can no longer get around the house without an accompaniment of creaks and groans and thuds. He moves, he says, "with an oof in each step.Tom is 55, and it's worth comparing him to similar literary characters—other pr