A witty premise weighed down by gloom

Book review: The Ten Year Affair by Erin SomersOne of my favourite books of the past five years is Big Swiss by Jen Beagin, a novel which is, among other things, a hilarious send-up of privileged millennials living in the Hudson River Valley. So, when I heard about The Ten Year Affair, another novel getting strong reviews for its witty mockery of the exact same demographic, I was very much along for the ride. Sadly, Somers’ novel ended up feeling much more saggy than sharp, and I think the source of the problem lies in optimism: either I have too much or the novel has too little, or both. Cora and Eliot are 30, married with a baby and a three-year-old, earning good enough money, and own their home in a picturesque town with a mountain and a waterfall. Cora, the novel’s protagonist, sort-of-but-just-barely attempts to be content with what most neutrals would consider a very fortunate life, but instead feels that her existence lacks meaning since she spends her time at home with the children and Eliot is a tiresome millennial cliché who talks a good game as a progressive, caring husband, but who is basically oblivious and tries to cover up the fact that he has no libido because of his long-term antidepressant use by getting stoned every night and blaming the weed instead. So, naturally, she becomes immediately sexually obsessed with a cinnamon-flavoured-toothpick-chewing married dad, Sam, at the local baby group, where they unite in the face of a domineering evangelist for crunchy parenting and women whose sources of pride/topics of conversation seem limited to orgasming during labour and the wonders of (reversible) vasectomies. But, even though Sam reciprocates Cora’s desire, he puts her off for years, which drives Cora to an existence along two parallel timelines, the reality of no affair and the fictional world of the affair which she uses to sustain her. And so it goes for a very long time till the timelines briefly switch, before the affair ultimately fizzles out and moves from projection to memory. The conceit is interesting, and well-handled, and the scenes at the baby group are genuinely funny. The writing, on the whole, is unobjectionable. But that’s not enough for this reader. There’s no narratorial tenderness, no characters you can root for, not nearly enough laughs, and, above all, there seems to be more effort put into making a reader feel miserable about middle age than into achieving any other goal. The whole thing is weighted with melancholy about hitting 40, without either saying or justifying it. Maybe it’s just me, but I like being 40 and being married and having young children, and while I’m sure there are those that don’t, I’m just not sure anybody needs a book that seems to be trying to make people feel sad about something that’s both inevitable and not sad at all.