The Ten Year Affair

Settle in and tell us the setting detail that felt coziest to you: a kitchen, a porch, a drive, a small-town errand. Where in this book would you most want to sit for an hour?

This is a book about an ordinary life examined very closely. What small domestic moment made you smile in recognition, the kind of thing you did not expect to see written down?

The book treats daydreaming as a real and ongoing part of a life. How did it feel to read someone else's inner alternate life so plainly? Comforting, exposing, or a little of both?

Early parenthood here is rendered with a lot of tenderness and a lot of fatigue at once. Which did you feel more strongly while reading, and did that surprise you?

Long friendship and long marriage sit side by side in this novel. What did the book make you feel about the people who have simply been around for a decade of your life?

Somers is very funny about things that are not funny. Was there a line or moment where the humor let you relax into something that might otherwise have stung?

By the end, had your feeling about the imagined life shifted from where it started? Not what happens, just whether your sympathy moved, and what moved it.

If you could sit with the central character over tea at the close of the book, what would you want to say to her? Not advice, just the thing you would want her to know.