Faber acquires ‘quietly exhilarating’ new novel by Ben Markovits

Faber has acquired The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits, an “unforgettable road trip of a novel about getting older, and the challenges and rewards of long-term marriage”.

Publishing director Angus Cargill acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, and translation rights from Georgia Garrett at RCW Literary Agency, with publication scheduled for March 2025.

Its synopsis reads: “When Tom Layward’s wife had an affair, he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest child turned 18. Twelve years later, while driving her to Pittsburgh to start university, he remembers his pact. He is also on the run from his own health issues, and the fact that he’s been put on leave at work after students complained about the politics of his law class – something he hasn’t yet told his wife.

“So, after dropping Miriam off, he keeps driving, with the vague plan of visiting various people from his past – an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son – en route, maybe, to his father’s grave in California.” Described as “pitch perfect, quietly exhilarating and moving”, The Rest of Our Lives is “a novel about family, marriage and those moments which may come to define us”.

Markovits’ previous novels include Either Side of Winter, You Don’t Have to Live Like This and, most recently, The Sidekick (Faber). He has published essays, stories, poetry and reviews in the Guardian, Granta, the Paris Review and the New York Times, among others.

In 2013, Granta selected him as one of their Best of Young British Novelists and in 2015 he won the Eccles British Library Writer in Residence Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He lives in London and teaches creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Markovits said: “A few summers ago, I drove with my family from my hometown in Texas to California, while I got progressively sicker with symptoms the doctors couldn’t diagnose. It turned out to be lymphoma, but I still remember that journey as one of the most intense and even beautiful I’ve ever made. It was the inspiration for this novel about a man in a very different marriage, who, after dropping his daughter at university, begins driving across America, revisiting many of the scenes and friends of his youth as he tries to come to terms with the next stage of his life.”

Cargill said: “The Rest of Our Lives is a quietly profound road-trip novel about infidelity, kids growing up and leaving home and the spectre of serious illness. How lucky we are to have a writer of Markovits’ skill and empathy to so vividly evoke this marriage’s journey.”