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A Novel
by Erin Somers
Book Reviewed by:A hilariously acerbic sliding doors novel about a chance meeting between two young parents, both happily married (just not to each other) that sparks a will-they-won't-they romance—perfect for fans of Big Swiss and Acts of Service.
When Cora meets Sam at a baby group in their small town, the chemistry between them is undeniable. Both are happily married young parents with two kids, and neither sees themselves as the type to engage in an affair. Yet their connection grows stronger, and as their lives continue to intertwine, the romantic tension between them becomes all-consuming—until their worlds unravel into two parallel timelines. In one, they pursue their feelings. In the other, they resist.
As reality splits, the everyday details of Cora's life—her depressing marketing job, her daughter's new fascination with the afterlife, her husband's obsession with podcasts about the history of rope—gain fresh perspective. The intersecting and diverging timelines blur the boundaries of reality and fantasy, questioning what might have been and what truly matters.
The Ten Year Affair is a witty, emotionally-charged exploration of marriage, family life, and the roads not taken, that ultimately asks: do we really want our fantasies to come true?
In an unnamed town in the Hudson Valley, thirty-year-old Cora is living two lives. In one life—reality—she's a mother to two young children and a content manager at a digital marketing company. While on maternity leave, she befriends Sam, the sole father in her local baby group. Cora's other life is her fantasy life, in which she and Sam do decide to have an affair. This other "timeline" runs parallel to Cora's real life, but The Ten Year Affair is not a sci-fi book about multiverses. It's simply that Cora's mind follows the fantasy through time at the same pace at which she lives through reality; her fantasy world reflects what she wants, what she's unsatisfied about in her real life, what she wishes to escape. The four central characters are all rather depressing figures, but the book doesn't sink into real bleakness or despair; at most it's an abstract, light malaise...continued
Full Review
(953 words)
(Reviewed by Chloe Pfeiffer).
Brandon Taylor, author of The Late Americans and Filthy Animals
The Ten Year Affair is a hilarious and acutely observed account of early middle life. Somers writes with warmth, wit, and shimmering insight about the failings and strivings of decent people who wake up and find that life isn't quite working out. No other writer at work today is as alert to the comedy of everyday life and to the extraordinary realms of feeling that lie behind that comedy. I never wanted this novel to end. I loved every moment. Somers has written a classic of our era. Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection
The Ten Year Affairisn't just the best book about adultery since Madame Bovary; it's also a funny and deeply true novel about the role of the imagination in human existence, those banal longterm daydreams that compete with your life while helping you cope with it. Erin Somers's wit is as cool, caustic, and dry as liquid nitrogen, and her dangerous talent is on full display in this excellent book.Adultery has always been a compelling subject in literature: classics like Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, and Lady Chatterley's Lover explore the psyches of women who want more than their marriage provides. Erin Somers, author of The Ten Year Affair, takes as her inspiration classic stories from the postwar era: novels of middle-class, suburban dissatisfaction, in which husbands drank and despaired and cheated on their wives.
Since the days of Cheever and Updike, novelists like Somers have continued exploring and expanding the definitions of marriage and infidelity. Many of these novels portray adultery in new ways, not always driven by desperation or doomed to despair.
The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
A ...
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Life is the garment we continually alter, but which never seems to fit.
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