How to deal with a midlife crisis — get in a car and keep driving
The Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show has an unimprovably bleak line on the letdowns of ageing: 'Your expectations get ground down and down until finally you settle for a life that would have mortified you 20 years ago, but now seems like a blessed relief.' The literary exemplar of such stoical suffering is poor Stoner, the perpetually thwarted Midwestern academic in John Williams's 1965 novel of the same name.
But what if Stoner escaped his failed marriage and professional disappointments and embarked on a road trip to California? That's more or less the setup of The Rest of Our Lives. Ben Markovits's 12th novel is a slim study of middle-aged ennui set on the US highway, scattered with its English-American author's familiar interests such
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