Book Club Night Kit

The Ten Year Affair

Erin Somers

Cozy night

A wry, tender novel about a long marriage, a long friendship, and the parallel life a person builds inside their own head over ten years. It is intimate, funny, and endlessly easy to talk about because almost everyone has imagined a road not taken.

Come Daydream With Us (Slippers Encouraged)

We are reading Erin Somers' The Ten Year Affair, a funny and tender novel about marriage, friendship, and the life you live in your head. Baked ziti, warm cider, and a couch with your name on it.

Reading level: Moderate

Best for: A club that likes talking about real life, marriage, and daydreams more than plot mechanics, with everyone in socks on the couch

Discussion

Warm-up

1.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?
2.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?

Digging in

1.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?
2.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?
3.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?
4.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?

Going deep

1.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.
2.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.

On the table & to sip

To eat

Baked ziti in a big dish, served straight from the pan

A Hudson Valley weeknight dinner for a houseful. It matches the book's register of domestic life done imperfectly and with love, and it needs nothing but a spoon and paper napkins.

A bakery board of cinnamon babka, buttered rolls, and a wedge of sharp cheddar

Small-town upstate New York grocery-run food. Easy to assemble and it keeps people grazing and talking instead of sitting formally at a table.

Warm apple crumble with the ice cream left out to soften

Hudson Valley orchards in one dish, and a little indulgent in the way the novel's daydreams are. Make it ahead, reheat before the group arrives.

To sip

Mulled cider with cinnamon and orange peel, kept warm on the stove (no alcohol)

Non-alcoholic, upstate autumn in a mug, and the smell greets people at the door before anyone says hello.

Hot toddies with honey and lemon

The grown-up, slightly indulgent choice for a night about grown-up longing. Set out the kettle, whiskey, honey, and lemon and let guests build their own.

A bottle of dry Finger Lakes Riesling, opened and left on the counter

A regional New York pour that suits the book's sly, bright humor and requires zero effort from the host.