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26 Jun
11:36am, 26 Jun 2025
55,355 posts
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McGoohan
Those were the days of our lives. So trilled popular musical band Freddie Mercury and the Queen. It is almost certain that Ben Markovits had this song and the 1991 album Innuendo from which the song is taken, when he was writing his novel The Rest of Our Lives. Reading between the lines, it is clear that the novel is an attempt to interpret Roger Taylor's lyrics and to explain why the song is called 'These Are The Days of Our Lives' when Freddie sings 'Those Were...'
Only close reading will answer.
Trebuchet your thoughts like flaming projectiles hurled at castle walls, into the thread below.
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26 Jun
12:21pm, 26 Jun 2025
23,267 posts
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Cerrertonia
Seems to be on special offer on kindle today - £2.89.
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3 Jul
9:41am, 3 Jul 2025
23,033 posts
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Chrisull
I picked this up on the Kindle offer, as a kind of avoidance therapy, avoiding the physical book club book I was actually reading, which had a solid deadline to meet, that I of course failed to meet. The synopsis vaguely chimed with me....
It's very much in the ilk of John Updike, Richard Ford's quasi nostaglic, occasionally jaundiced view of Americana. The protagonist is a privileged middle class, somewhat clenched teeth, everyman. He makes his marriage sound like hard work, his children sound like hard work and perhaps most pertinently his wife sound like hard work. He fills you in that at some point previously his wife had had an affair (and later you find out got pregnant, attempted to keep it and miscarried), and that as a result he has promised himself to leave her when the last kid reaches 18.
After this bit of backstory filling in, we're on a roadtrip with his daughter, taking her to college. His wife chooses not to go, and after he drops her off he carries on driving, first to see his younger brother, then old friends. His wife Amy despite seeming to not like him, lives in a state of fear that he will walk out on her, although elsewhere we learn, she isn't short of male attention, possessed of a beauty and elegance that mean male suitors trail her like flies to roadkill.
We learn about his work, and that he's taking a time out, he's signed a non-pc lawyers case, defending a sports team against some inappropriate behaviour/culture, which is kind of sold as an accidental, it could happen to you in your job (which I don't really buy). At the same time he's ignoring the symptoms of some obvious and serious health issue.
And that's the nub of the problem, I don't mind not liking characters, but it feels like a moral yaw that sits at the heart of America, characters who drift aimlessly without purpose, without moral aims/guidance. I came to the book expecting parallels with my life, and it's a weird kind of inverse. I'm taking my son back up to Leeds this summer, I will be attempting to extend it to see my friend who has cancer. A runner in our club is having his bladder removed today, both my friend and the runner are younger than me. I don't feel the need to run from my life, I miss my better half if I'm away her from one night. I spend a lot of time volunteering, worry constantly about climate change (which is currently impacting the health of two good friends of mine). The guy talks to his wife constantly in the book in his head, because the imagined version is much easier to get on with.
Another odd kind of inverse is a book I haven't read Miranda July's "All Fours" where a woman goes away on a roadtrip with a younger man and to steal the Guardian reviewers phrase 'to blow up her life'. And you feel this is what the main character here is doing. There's two things that bother me about The Rest of Our Lives (and perhaps All Fours if I read it):
1) Is that a lot of the woman feel - through the narrator's eyes "sexually available" - whether it's the realtor playing pool, or his ex-girlfriend he hasn't seen in 30 years saying she would sleep with him if she could, or even his son's gf!!! And I'm like that doesn't ring true, this is kind of male wish fulfilment, either that or I'm "missing out" (I'm not at all missing out) on something. And Updike, Roth (and Ford to a much lesser extent) all have it. And I find it a bit tiresome and grating. Does it all boil down to sex? Am I reading subtexts that aren't really there?
2) Privilege. And privilege to blow up your life. For I'd say 90% of people plus, it just isn't there any more (if it ever was). How many people, even of the middle classes, live pay cheque to pay cheque? It's nice you can feel you have the time and money to swan off on a road trip. It kind of irks me. I recently spent 10 days away (for the first time in 26 years of marriage), on a trip with my half sister to see relatives and find out about our shared family history, that was like months of planning, budgeting, checking my other half was fine with it, what do we do with the dog if he doesn't walk, how are the boys all meanwhile. I suppose that wouldn't make a great book tho. (actually it might, but there's probably several blogs in that)
And Updike, Roth and Ford get away with it because they all could write beautifully, whereas Markowitz is easy to read, occasionally has a nice turn of phrase, but the book ends on kind of a "huh?" moment. And for me it was a bit huh?
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Book Group
Jul 2025