The Ten Year Affair
- 27 Aug 2026
- 9781837264575
- £9.99
- 304 pp
- 129×198mm
- 15 Jan 2026
- 9781837264551
- £7.99
- 304 pp
- 15 Jan 2026
- 9781837264544
- £25
- 9 hrs 32 min
In a few words
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?
In a few words
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?
In a few words
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?
I devoured it. It was completely exhilarating! The everyday, but glittering so darkly. I laughed all the time. I reread most of the pages. I wished I'd written it
Catherine Newman
Sociologically acute and slyly entertaining . . . Somers’s crisp writing makes for a humane, frequently funny and very readable novel that captures something not just about how we live now, but about choices, compromises, sacrifice, being a parent, getting older
I devoured it. It was completely exhilarating! The everyday, but glittering so darkly. I laughed all the time. I reread most of the pages. I wished I'd written it
Catherine Newman
Sociologically acute and slyly entertaining . . . Somers’s crisp writing makes for a humane, frequently funny and very readable novel that captures something not just about how we live now, but about choices, compromises, sacrifice, being a parent, getting older
I devoured it. It was completely exhilarating! The everyday, but glittering so darkly. I laughed all the time. I reread most of the pages. I wished I'd written it
Catherine Newman
Sociologically acute and slyly entertaining . . . Somers’s crisp writing makes for a humane, frequently funny and very readable novel that captures something not just about how we live now, but about choices, compromises, sacrifice, being a parent, getting older
More about
the book
MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, STYLIST, NEW STATESMAN, BUSTLE, LITHUB, W MAGAZINE AND OUR CULTURE
DAKOTA JOHNSON BOOK CLUB PICK
THE SHIFT BY SAM BAKER BOOK CLUB PICK
Two parents. Happily married. Just not to each other.
When Cora meets Sam at a baby group in their small town, the chemistry between them is instant and undeniable. But both are happily married, and neither is the type to cheat. So as their lives intertwine and the romantic tension between them heightens, Cora turns to her imagination: in her head, she and Sam pursue their feelings; in reality, they resist.
Yet as the fantasy affair grows ever more intoxicating, it can’t help but cast Cora’s everyday life – the mushroom problem in the bathroom, her daughter’s new fascination with the afterlife, her husband’s obsession with podcasts about the history of rope – in a new light. And when the boundaries grow increasingly blurred, she must decide what truly matters.
‘Somers’s wit is as cool, caustic and dry as liquid nitrogen’ TONY TULATHIMUTTE
‘Hilarious’ BRANDON TAYLOR
‘Compulsively readable’ JULIA MAY JONAS
More about
the book
MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, STYLIST, NEW STATESMAN, BUSTLE, LITHUB, W MAGAZINE AND OUR CULTURE
DAKOTA JOHNSON BOOK CLUB PICK
THE SHIFT BY SAM BAKER BOOK CLUB PICK
Two parents. Happily married. Just not to each other.
When Cora meets Sam at a baby group in their small town, the chemistry between them is instant and undeniable. But both are happily married, and neither is the type to cheat. So as their lives intertwine and the romantic tension between them heightens, Cora turns to her imagination: in her head, she and Sam pursue their feelings; in reality, they resist.
Yet as the fantasy affair grows ever more intoxicating, it can’t help but cast Cora’s everyday life – the mushroom problem in the bathroom, her daughter’s new fascination with the afterlife, her husband’s obsession with podcasts about the history of rope – in a new light. And when the boundaries grow increasingly blurred, she must decide what truly matters.
Razor-sharp, exhilaratingly honest and salted with an irresistible acerbic wit, The Ten Year Affair explores family life, fidelity and the roads not taken, and ultimately asks: do we really want our fantasies to come true?
‘Somers’s wit is as cool, caustic and dry as liquid nitrogen’ TONY TULATHIMUTTE
‘Hilarious’ BRANDON TAYLOR
‘Compulsively readable’ JULIA MAY JONAS
More about
the book
MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, STYLIST, NEW STATESMAN, BUSTLE, LITHUB, W MAGAZINE AND OUR CULTURE
DAKOTA JOHNSON BOOK CLUB PICK
THE SHIFT BY SAM BAKER BOOK CLUB PICK
Two parents. Happily married. Just not to each other.
When Cora meets Sam at a baby group in their small town, the chemistry between them is instant and undeniable. But both are happily married, and neither is the type to cheat. So as their lives intertwine and the romantic tension between them heightens, Cora turns to her imagination: in her head, she and Sam pursue their feelings; in reality, they resist.
Yet as the fantasy affair grows ever more intoxicating, it can’t help but cast Cora’s everyday life – the mushroom problem in the bathroom, her daughter’s new fascination with the afterlife, her husband’s obsession with podcasts about the history of rope – in a new light. And when the boundaries grow increasingly blurred, she must decide what truly matters.
Razor-sharp, exhilaratingly honest and salted with an irresistible acerbic wit, The Ten Year Affair explores family life, fidelity and the roads not taken, and ultimately asks: do we really want our fantasies to come true?
‘Somers’s wit is as cool, caustic and dry as liquid nitrogen’ TONY TULATHIMUTTE
‘Hilarious’ BRANDON TAYLOR
‘Compulsively readable’ JULIA MAY JONAS
A compulsively readable, surprising, and wholly satisfying story of the way we long, now. Told with inexhaustible wit, Somers's novel is packed full of observations and flights of imagination so perfect in their particulars that their accumulation becomes luminous
Julia May Jonas
Somers explores ideas of monogamy, motherhood and modern living in the vein of Miranda July’s All Fours or Julia May Jonas’s Vladimir
The midlife adultery story our entire generation deserves . . . I loved this razor-sharp, hilarious, finely observed novel, written with such withering exactitude. It is absolutely aware of itself, spare and brimming with subtext
So brilliantly poised and acutely observed . . . Somers captures so many uncomfortable truths about modern middle-class marriage . . . One of the only novels I’ve ever read about infidelity that really gives fantasy its due. It’s a very poignant story about disappointment and disillusionment, but there’s nothing dreary about Somers’ prose . . . The beauty of this book lies in the memorable details
Johanna Thomas-corr, Chief Literary Critic For The Times And Sunday Times
A compulsively readable, surprising, and wholly satisfying story of the way we long, now. Told with inexhaustible wit, Somers's novel is packed full of observations and flights of imagination so perfect in their particulars that their accumulation becomes luminous
Julia May Jonas
Somers explores ideas of monogamy, motherhood and modern living in the vein of Miranda July’s All Fours or Julia May Jonas’s Vladimir
The midlife adultery story our entire generation deserves . . . I loved this razor-sharp, hilarious, finely observed novel, written with such withering exactitude. It is absolutely aware of itself, spare and brimming with subtext
So brilliantly poised and acutely observed . . . Somers captures so many uncomfortable truths about modern middle-class marriage . . . One of the only novels I’ve ever read about infidelity that really gives fantasy its due. It’s a very poignant story about disappointment and disillusionment, but there’s nothing dreary about Somers’ prose . . . The beauty of this book lies in the memorable details
Johanna Thomas-corr, Chief Literary Critic For The Times And Sunday Times
A compulsively readable, surprising, and wholly satisfying story of the way we long, now. Told with inexhaustible wit, Somers's novel is packed full of observations and flights of imagination so perfect in their particulars that their accumulation becomes luminous
Julia May Jonas
Somers explores ideas of monogamy, motherhood and modern living in the vein of Miranda July’s All Fours or Julia May Jonas’s Vladimir
The midlife adultery story our entire generation deserves . . . I loved this razor-sharp, hilarious, finely observed novel, written with such withering exactitude. It is absolutely aware of itself, spare and brimming with subtext
So brilliantly poised and acutely observed . . . Somers captures so many uncomfortable truths about modern middle-class marriage . . . One of the only novels I’ve ever read about infidelity that really gives fantasy its due. It’s a very poignant story about disappointment and disillusionment, but there’s nothing dreary about Somers’ prose . . . The beauty of this book lies in the memorable details
Johanna Thomas-corr, Chief Literary Critic For The Times And Sunday Times
Erin Somers
View profileErin Somers is a reporter and news editor at Publishers Lunch. Her first novel, Stay Up with Hugo Best was a Vogue Best Book of the Year in 2019. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Paris Review, New York Times Book Review, New Republic, New York Magazine, Atlantic, Esquire, GQ, Best American Short Stories and many other publications. She has been the recipient of an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the NYC Centre for Fiction, a fellowship from the Millay Colony, and was a 2020 finalist for a National Magazine Award. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family.
erinsomers.com
Erin Somers
View profileErin Somers is a reporter and news editor at Publishers Lunch. Her first novel, Stay Up with Hugo Best was a Vogue Best Book of the Year in 2019. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Paris Review, New York Times Book Review, New Republic, New York Magazine, Atlantic, Esquire, GQ, Best American Short Stories and many other publications. She has been the recipient of an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the NYC Centre for Fiction, a fellowship from the Millay Colony, and was a 2020 finalist for a National Magazine Award. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family.
erinsomers.com
Erin Somers
View profileErin Somers is a reporter and news editor at Publishers Lunch. Her first novel, Stay Up with Hugo Best was a Vogue Best Book of the Year in 2019. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Paris Review, New York Times Book Review, New Republic, New York Magazine, Atlantic, Esquire, GQ, Best American Short Stories and many other publications. She has been the recipient of an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the NYC Centre for Fiction, a fellowship from the Millay Colony, and was a 2020 finalist for a National Magazine Award. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family.
erinsomers.com
