Just like last week, it’s another book centring on family. The Rest of Our Lives focuses on the story of a father, Tom Layward, who is staying together with his unfaithful wife until their youngest daughter turns eighteen. After that, he’s done with her.
One day, while driving his daughter to Pittsburgh University, he recalls that promise he made to himself about leaving. After dropping his daughter off, Tom drives on, thinking of people from his past to visit, and contemplating stopping by his father’s grave on the opposite side of the country, in California.
Markovits’ novel seems to want to hone in on both the family and what it means to an aged man with worsening health who—as the title suggests—now will undergo a drastic alteration to the rest of his life.
The premise is intriguing, even to someone who isn’t fond of stories that centre in on family melodrama. Instead, this novel seems about finding one’s self long after youth has expired and many of life’s big choices have been made. A new take on a long overdone and easy to write subject.
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