The Ten Year Affair
A Novel
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3.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
“The best book about adultery since Madame Bovary.” —Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection
A New Yorker, NPR, ELLE, and Esquire Best Book of the Year
A hilariously acerbic sliding doors novel about a chance meeting between two young parents, both happily married (just not to each other) that sparks a will-they-won’t-they romance.
When Cora meets Sam at a baby group in their small town, the chemistry between them is undeniable. Both are happily married young parents with two kids, and neither sees themselves as the type to engage in an affair. Yet their connection grows stronger, and as their lives continue to intertwine, the romantic tension between them becomes all-consuming—until their worlds unravel into two parallel timelines. In one, they pursue their feelings. In the other, they resist.
As reality splits, the everyday details of Cora’s life—her depressing marketing job, her daughter’s new fascination with the afterlife, her husband’s obsession with podcasts about the history of rope—gain fresh perspective. The intersecting and diverging timelines blur the boundaries of reality and fantasy, questioning what might have been and what truly matters.
The Ten Year Affair is a witty, emotionally-charged exploration of marriage, family life, and the roads not taken, that ultimately asks: do we really want our fantasies to come true?
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This sharp, funny domestic drama captures how our fantasies can be as consuming as real life. Cora, a young mother in a small town, feels an undeniable spark with Sam, another married parent in her baby group. Neither thinks of themselves as the type to stray. But as they circle each other, the story splits into two timelines, Sliding Doors–style: one where Cora pursues an affair, and one where she resists. Erin Somers tracks both versions of Cora’s life, from work frustrations to awkward dinner parties, with wit and precision. We loved the way she balances biting humour and aching honesty. She nails the strange intimacy of parenting circles and the comfortable everyday tenderness of marriage while keeping us hooked on the what-ifs. The Ten Year Affair is a funny, heartfelt read about the fantasies we chase and the lives we choose.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Somers (Stay Up with Hugo Best) offers a wry and ingenious tale of marital infidelity. Cora and Eliot live in the Hudson Valley with their two small children. Having moved there from New York City, Cora confronts the malaise of small-town married life, and when she meets the also-married Sam, a fellow transplant, at a group for parents and their babies, her interest is piqued. Cora and Sam go out for drinks and wind up kissing, after which Cora begins fantasizing about meeting Sam at a hotel in a neighboring town to have sex. In this imaginary parallel life, Cora gets pregnant by Sam and has an abortion. Though the fantasy makes an affair appear untenable in her real life, she continues allowing herself to be tempted. She befriends Sam's wife, Jules, and the families vacation together in Cape Cod. There, Jules gives Sam the business for skinny-dipping with Cora, and Cora and Sam cool it for a while. Her fantasies become increasingly wild as she envisions Sam and her engaging in a threesome with a Frenchman they meet in Paris, once again setting up the potential for a full-blown affair and causing fantasy and reality to blur. Somers offers a sardonic view into the pressures of marriage and motherhood and the ambient temptation of adultery ("Passion was what went on in the other world... between two people with unwholesome fixations on each other, determined to do something stupid"). Readers will find this hard to put down.
