The Rest of Lives - Ben Markovits

 

Read, 2025 Booker short listed novel, 'The Rest of Our Lives' by Ben Markovits. It was a thought provoking read as a fifty five year old man battles internally on the questions related to his life, at that juncture - whether he should save  his marriage, his new redundancy as a professional in a fast changing world - where, leave alone his views, even the mere association with parties with now unpopular, or even unacceptable views, is sufficient to make him so, and the "engine alert" on his health he ignores - until he cannot any more. In summary a series of simultaneous worries, that nags at his heart, while he remains undecided. As the narration happens in the first person, we realise that our narrator Tom, is actually only guilty of one case of inaction - his attempt to continue in life from his youth, non-committed, and as a drifter. We find that his profession as a legal academic was not his first choice, but what he settled for. That he was lucky to land a beautiful spouse, but that too more out of chance, more than either party falling 'head over heels' in love, as could be expected of a youth. As we listen to our narrator, the reader questions, if Amy, Tom's wife too felt restless upon realising that she had settled for less than she could - whether she missed the prize catches that passed her by in life, with whom she had relationships before settling for Tom. 'Settling' is the key word here. Can settling for one thing,  at one stage in life in an attempt for temporary piece of mind, come back to haunt you as you see things in a different perspective later in life ?

    "When he broke up with Amy, it was her first experience of being dumped by a guy who realized she wasn't ambitious enough for him. Or at least, who decided she wasn't part of his ambitions. This is something she was in the process of internalizing when we started going out. Who wants to do that ? But it's also part of what attracted me to her, or made me sympathetic; at that time, I was in drop-out mode myself. First I wanted to be a professor, then I wanted to be a writer, but I ended up going to law school because ... I thought, just live a nice life, where you pay for nice things, which I wanted to do partly because of Amy. She gave me a sense for the first time of how nice a life you can buy, if you have the right tastes and know the right people.
    This is more or less the life we lived.
    At the same time, though, I wondered what she saw in me. I wasn't Jewish, I wasn't at Harvard. I was just some guy... working on a dead end PhD, who spent his long weekends making money as a check-in agent at Logan. In other words, basically adrift, at the one period of her life where she was drifting, too."

The word regret is not mentioned much in this book - only four times ( I checked -  the advantage of an electronic read as it were), and the most apt use of it, in terms of the point in discussion unfolds in the following dialogue:

"I used to tell my kids, you don't have to do anything you'll regret. most of the time you know beforehand, so you don't have to do it. So this ... just seems like an example of that."

"Okay," she said.

"It's just something I used to tell them. I have a feeling like, I want to get through unscathed. Does that make sense?"

"Get through what?"

"I don't know. The next twenty years, the next two months, whatever it is."

"That sounds like a dumb way to live," she said.

This dialogue is between Tom, and one of his early girl friends whom he visits, during his road trip, after dropping his daughter at the University - his daughter leaving,  which brings upon a stage in life where he tries to come to terms with his new life, with both his kids away from home. Maybe its what he didn't do that he regrets most, and maybe now in a stage of life where all those regrets stack up in front of him, the man finds it is beyond his immediate assessment - but maybe he doesn't have time to do so either ?

The Rest of Our Lives, doesn't necessarily mean the remaining days of Tom and Amy, in their 50s. It also means the rest of their lives, as they made a decision of a union, at a time when they were adrift, and was looking for something, and someone to settle with, maybe due to whatever disappointments, and indecision,  they found themselves to be. I found it a thought provoking, somewhat pertinent read as I too start on my middle age, with less things to look forward to, and often in a mode of critical assessment of my decisions - mostly unfairly so - but natural at this stage of life. Earlier this year, I read "Remains of the Day", and I found that as a necessary ingredient in looking at one's remaining time in this life. This book may compliment it, although the lesson to carry in mind is from Ishiguro.  In essence, the existential nature holistically of the book, the only mentioned in passing act of 'forgiving' - forgiving yourself mostly, your loved ones if necessary - that is implicit, in a book that lacks any specific plot, makes a fantastic novel. One of the best read of the year for me, clearly.

Rating: ****1/2

(photo credits: Faber Books)