White middle-aged law Professor Tom Layward is a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. Pretending things are OK, Tom gulps down anything life throws at him. He masks his health issues--a swollen face in the morning, leaky eyes, exhaustion. He conceals his forced leave from work and suppresses problems in a marriage that’s gone flat. Twelve years back Amy, Tom’s wife had an affair, “with a guy from the synagogue.” Tom agreed to stay “until the kids had left home.” Now with their son Michael in grad school and having just driven their daughter Miri to Carnegie-Mellon University Tom ponders how to reframe his life. Stuck in a quagmire of inaction the decision is made for him.

 

As a young man, Tom thought he had a sure-fire way to deal with any challenge. “I never had a problem you couldn’t solve by going to the gym.” That method may have worked on the basketball court in college but not with wife, Amy, “You don’t feel anything about anything” Amy would repeatedly plead, begging Tom to change his “emotionally blank,” matter-of- fact attitude. Their goals and aspirations for the children clashed almost as much as their background. Born into a Catholic family, the product of divorce, Tom’s father abandoned their home, leaving their mother and Tom’s brother in tatters. Tom worked his way through college, first as a lit major, then, after marrying Amy, he switched to law feeling a sense of obligation to support her in the high style she expected.

 

The daughter of the well-heeled Naftalis, Amy wished to move her family in a conventional direction, with definite goals that promised a secure, stable future. Tom on the other hand was on board with his daughter’s alternative lifestyle-- nose piercings, funky circle of friends. Unsuccessful to reconcile their differences, Amy found solace in an affair plunging the marriage into jeopardy.

 

Now 12 years later, an empty nester adrift and rudderless with no definite plan in mind, Tom considers writing a book about “pickup basketball.” He admits “it won’t happen.” Instead he hits the road to sort out the maelstrom in his life. A three thousand mile trip from Pittsburgh to LA takes him to California to see his son Michael. He detours to spend time with a former girlfriend, visit his estranged brother and takes the opportunity to hang out with a college-days basketball buddy. While grappling to quell his inner turmoil, wrestling whether to return to his “C minor” marriage, Tom is beset by a serious threat to his own survival from which he can no longer run away.

 

A bit of a soap opera, the novel evokes feelings of loneliness and the disaffecting malaise plaguing a “middle-aged guy getting older.” A subplot relating to racial discrimination in the NBA as well as gender issues may strike a chord with sports fans, but I can’t for the life of me understand how The Rest of Our lives, the 12th novel by author Ben Markovits, was shortlisted for the coveted Booker Prize.