Redefining Adultery: Contemporary Novels of Marriages and Affairs

Redefining Adultery: Contemporary Novels of Marriages and Affairs

This article relates to The Ten Year Affair

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 modern classic that follows Frank Reid, an Englishman who lives in Moscow, whose wife has left him and who finds himself drawn to, and possibly falling in love with, the new nanny he hires.

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

Frances, a young woman, meets and becomes friends with a sophisticated older couple, Melissa and Nick, and soon starts sleeping with Nick. Melissa and Nick have an open marriage, making this a more modern twist on stories of men having affairs.

Luster by Raven Leilani

This novel similarly follows a young woman navigating a relationship with a man in an open marriage. Complicating matters, she moves in with his family after she is fired from her job.

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Two families intertwine forever after the father of one family begins an affair with the mother of the other. The new, adulterous couple marries and moves to a new state, where they create a new home in which the children from their previous marriages become not-quite siblings.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

A new couple is ripped apart when the husband is convicted of a crime he didn't commit and sentenced to twelve years in prison. Although his wife originally stays faithful to him, she begins to find comfort and love in another man, her childhood friend.

My Education by Susan Choi

A graduate student is drawn to her attractive professor, who is known for seducing students, but more so to his wife; the affair between the two women changes all of their lives.

Filed under Books and Authors

This article relates to The Ten Year Affair. It first ran in the November 19, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.