đ Share this article The Decade of Desire from author Erin Somers: A Middle-Aged Infidelity Story Our Era Needs. Within the novel by Erin Somers The Ten Year Affair, the story centers on Cora, a millennial mother who yearns for a bygone kind of passion with a bygone kind of man. Unfortunately for her, morality in 2015 is rigid and cynical, so rather than embarking on the affair, Cora devotes a full decade obsessively analyzing it, fantasising about it and discussing it with her potential lover, Sam â a playgroup dad who works as âchief storytelling officerâ at a mortgage start-up. This novel presents itself as a humorous twist on the traditional tale of infidelity and a sharp satire of a particular, self-aware clique of economically slipping New Yorkers. It stands as the midlife adultery story our entire generation deserves: a propulsive, witty takedown of insufferable hand-wringers whoâve managed to ruin intimacy itself. A Portrait of Smug Discontent The central couple, Cora and Eliot are highly educated, somewhat arrogant former city dwellers who, as costs increased and their family expanded, have moved reluctantly to the suburbs. Trapped by the âexhausting constant demandsâ of parenthood, they juggle desk jobs, a pair of kids, and a persistent mushroom growing under their bathroom tiles that they lack the energy and money to sort out. They spend time with similarly minded urban exiles who have fled the city to sip craft cocktails from rustic glassware and judge each other amidst a more rural setting. But if Cora is lonely in this new environment, itâs not because her own critical, joyless perspective but because her new neighbours are âboring and self-absorbed, even more so than in their previous urban lifeâ. Eliot is high-minded and oblivious. He snacks casually as she scrubs the oven and says he doesnât wish to possess her. Cora imagines herself trying to survive a rustic life together, washing clothes on a stone while he searches for chanterelles. She longs for excitement, a bit of depravity, a lover who will beg, and worship, and âgrowl at the feet of the womanâs excellenceâ. "The mundane grind of everyday existence, you had to admire its consistency." The Problem of Over-Intellectualized Desire The trouble is that Cora is just as intellectually constrained as her husband, and incapable of that kind of abandon herself. She finds it "an overwhelming request to feel fervor" (about work, she says, but in truth, about all aspects of life). What she feels for Sam are âtepid, barely beyond simple fondnessâ. She craves âa transcendent physical experience and escape her own reality momentarilyâ. Yet, for a decade, Sam refuses while Cora pines. She imagines an alternate timeline running concurrent to her actual existence, where in place of chores and errands, she has sex and hotels and Sam. When her fictional romance fizzles, she imagines âa French guy named Baptisteâ who teams up with Sam in helping her out of the bath, ânothing for her to do, no responsibilities, no obligations, other than to be revered as a youthful bride, whoâd died improbably of TBâ. A Disappointing Climax and Undercurrents When they eventually succumb to their desires, the sex is sad, without much play or complicity. It isnât the nostalgically perfect affair she dreamed up for 10 years. Cora puts on an alluring gown and Sam âstoically eat[s] her out in their hotel roomâ prior to a meal. One imagines that Cora wants to inhabit a James Salter novel, where sex is sordid and confusing, where imbalances of control exist, and characters act out, and no one tallies the cost. Throughout the novel the root of Coraâs problem: she has such cutting wit, but so little joy. Of Samâs erotic photo, Cora critiques, âhe tightened his stomach and ensured he was aroused, but has not cleared the frame of Crocsâ. Since the event that diminished their pleasure was parenthood, one worries about what these idiots are doing to their children. As her daughter inquires about sex, the parents stumble. They start with babies then concede that sex isnât always about babies. Eliot mentions a penis then concedes that one isnât required. Ultimately, he settles for, âyou're aware of private parts?â Beneath the story flows a quiet theme of common existential queries of midlife: do our lives have meaning? What follows our final breath? These themes are more explicit in Cora's internal dialogues. Reading these exchanges, one wonders what moral Cora and her jaded circle would derive from their unsatisfying escapades. Would Cora grow more receptive of lifeâs flawed pleasures, its corny pleasures? Upon being questioned by Eliot about her affair in the middle of a podcast about rope, Cora reflects âevery serious exchange is undermined by its particularsâ. Others could argue it's enriched. But thatâs not Cora, and Somers doesnât give the protagonist easy revelations, or stretch her where she is unable to go. A Final Appraisal The result is a razor-sharp, uproariously funny, finely observed novel, written with such withering exactitude. It is profoundly self-aware, economical yet rich with implication: a depiction of a worried, self-protective cohort in middle age, chronically embarrassed, at once afraid of and desperate for sensation. Perhaps this is solely a metropolitan trait. For the sake of argument, we'll assume so.