"The Rest of Our Lives" by Benjamin Markovits

An audio book. Booker shortlisted.

Tom (first-person) ditched a literature Ph.D. Now he's a 55 y.o. law lecturer married to beautiful Amy, a jewish ex-cutter from a rich family. He has an undiagnosed illness - dizzy spells, etc - and the college is letting him go. Her father died young. 12 years before, at a time when she wanted another baby but Tom wasn't sure, she had an affair with Zak, in a kind of self-harming way, and miscarried. Tom had decided then to leave her as soon as the kids were at university. Tom rates their marriage as C-. They have kids Michael and (6 years younger) Miriam. Michael knows about Amy's affair but Miriam may well not. Miriam and her mother tend to argue. Once Michael left home he didn't try hard to stay in touch with his parents.

He gives Miriam a lift to distant Carnegie-Mellon. On the way back he visits his brother, a room-mate ("Sam hasn't fully inhabited his life, as if he's still renting it"), an ex-lover, a friend who thinks that white american basketball players are being victimized, then his son. Out of the blue with 2 hours of the book to go there's "Sometimes sitting in the hospital chair I think about that afternoon.". He's impressed by the relationship his son's in. He sometimes blurts out that he's leaving Amy. People keep telling him he looks ill. Michael calls an ambulance when he passes out. In a rather slow section we learn about his hospital visit - scans, etc. He has a long talk on the phone with Amy. He tells her about the people he's met. He has a large tumor in his chest, which should respond to treatment. Amy drives him away from the hospital.

There are some sub-themes -

• Acting - Various characters had tried acting. He and Miriam had watched all of "Friends" episodes seeing the characters become caricatures.
• Basketball - lawsuits, but also he tells people he's writing a book about neighbourhood play areas. He sometimes plays with people he meets.

The narrator's calm tone doesn't change, even after the hospitalisation - no panic, no fear.

Other reviews

• Marcel Theroux (it focuses on the difficult middle passage in the life of its protagonist, as he tries to figure out who he has been, what parts of himself he has surrendered, and who he might yet become. We learn as much from Tom’s encounters with other people as from what he tells us himself ... you sense how frustrating it would be to be in a relationship with him – a feeling that at any given time he’s holding a great deal back. While this might make him an annoying spouse, as a prose stylist, it makes him exemplary. This is a literary novel whose great literary qualities are understatement and self-effacement)
• julias-books (This is a road trip novel where the central character goes on a journey of self-examination. This could be a cliche if it was not handled extremely well. And I’m afraid that, for me, it was not handled extremely well. I found the author’s writing style languorous and dull. The ending was abrupt and it felt like the author had just got rather bored with his story and decided to stop. The characters lacked spark.)
• awriterreading (Tom has his own problems and isn’t telling us everything. There is a sort of blankness to his narration, an almost mannered refusal to let emotion in, or out ... The ending does redeem the novel, but it’s still distinctly understated.)