A Road Trip to White Male Meltdown

This twisted take on the great American road novel explores guilt, ego, and the restless mind of a man fleeing a failing marriage

- By SHARMISTHA JHA

Ben Markovits's Booker-shortlisted novel, The Rest of Our Lives, is a sharp, introspective take on the white male midlife crisis, told through a road trip that becomes both literal and metaphorical.

The novel explores guilt and vanity with an honesty that can feel uncomfortable. Markovits revisits familiar American literary terrain of the disillusioned man on the move, but does so with a self-awareness that tests the reader's empathy as much as his protagonist's.

It tells the story of Tom Layward, a law professor, who once dreamed of becoming a writer. When he finds out that his wife, Amy, had an affair, he decides to leave her once his youngest child, daughter Miri, goes off to college. Twelve years later, as he drives Miri to a university in Pittsburgh, he remembers this pact that he made in a moment of hurt pride and sexual vanity. After dropping off Miri, he decides to take a road trip. He keeps on driving west, with a vague plan to visit various people along the way: his ex-girlfriend, younger brother, an old college friend, and possibly his son, Michael. At the beginning of the book, Tom is suffering from mysterious symptoms of what he suspects is long Covid, and by the end of the book, he gets diagnosed with a terminal ailment.