The Rest of Our Lives is the compelling depiction of life at a crossroads is a male counterpart to Miranda July’ All Fours. What’s left when your kids grow up and leave home? When Tom Layward’s wife had an affair he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest daughter turned eighteen. Twelve years later while driving her to Pittsburgh to start university, he remembers his pact.

He also on the run from his own health issues, and the fact that he’s been put on leave at work after students complaints about the politics of his law class- something he hasn’t yet told his wife.

Markovits midlife crisis road trip with his daughter Mariam opens 12 years after Tom’s discovery of his wife’s affair – and he is soon to uphold his vow to leave her as soon as their youngest goes to college. What follows is a first-person, self-conscious introspective account of a marriage that often brings to mind Tom’s own admission that “at some level everything you feel or think is a kind of taking sides”.

The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits, Faber & Faber, 256 pages, £16.99.