At the start of Erin Somers’ new novel, Cora and Sam meet in a baby group in the back room of an overpriced children’s clothing store. They bond over their mutual hatred for a know-it-all mom who’s trying to feed smashed broccoli to her 10-month-old.
They continue to meet up — at the baby group and then elsewhere — until one day Cora admits her attraction to Sam.
“What about our families?” he says, and suggests they maintain their friendship and nothing more.
“If I wanted a new friend, I’d find a woman,” Cora tells him.
“So … what are we supposed to do?” he says. “Have a ten-year affair?”
They both agree the idea is ridiculous, not to mention wholly out of fashion with their millennial cohorts. “Even the word affair had the ring of obsolescence,” Cora thinks, “like a cigarette or an ad man or a chaise lounge.”
But the affair is there now, between them, and it serves as the persistent focus of Somers’ novel, The Ten Year Affair. In one timeline, Cora and Sam have their extramarital tryst. But in reality, they don’t. Cora stays faithful to her husband, Eliot; Sam remains with his wife, Jules; and the author winds her narrative between the two scenarios for a decade of intriguing and at times confounding “what ifs.”
This is Sliding Doors meets Sally Rooney, with emotional complexities serving as a constant soundtrack against the humdrum of domestic life. We follow Cora and Eliot through the strains of early parenthood and into the COVID-19 pandemic, when they’re forced to juggle working from home with monitoring their young children’s online schooling. They remain couple friends with Sam and Jules, which keeps up the romantic tension and reinforces Cora’s parallel-life fantasies.
The novel certainly has its share of spicy scenes, as Somers vividly portrays the affair side of the dual timeline. But the story centers on Cora’s millennial malaise despite her continued commitment to her husband, children, and daily life.
The Ten Year Affair began life as a short story. Somers somehow managed to expand the narrative from a few pages to a few hundred without losing any of the thrilling bits that propel the story along. Meanwhile, she introduces readers to a funny and compelling cast of characters — including Broccoli Mom — who offer lots to enjoy along with the will-they-won’t-they romantic storyline.
In the end, Somers delivers an evocative look at the realities of marriage and family life, and a meditation on the roads not taken.
