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The Ten Year Affair
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The Ten Year Affair

By: Erin Somers
Narrated by: Amanda Dolan
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About this listen

'Somers's wit is as cool, caustic and dry as liquid nitrogen' TONY TULATHIMUTTE

'Hilarious' BRANDON TAYLOR

'Compulsively readable' JULIA MAY JONAS

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?

©2026 Erin Somers (P)2026 Canongate Books Ltd

Critic Reviews

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)
The Ten Year Affair is a hilarious and acutely observed account of early middle life. Somers writes with warmth, wit, and shimmering insight about the failings and strivings of decent people who wake up and find that life isn't quite working out. No other writer at work today is as alert to the comedy of everyday life and to the extraordinary realms of feeling that lie behind that comedy. I never wanted this novel to end. I loved every moment. Somers has written a classic of our era (BRANDON TAYLOR, author of FILTHY ANIMALS)
The Ten Year Affair isn't just the best book about adultery since Madame Bovary; it's also a funny and deeply true novel about the role of the imagination in human existence, those banal long term daydreams that compete with your life while helping you cope with it. Erin Somers's wit is as cool, caustic and dry as liquid nitrogen, and her dangerous talent is on full display in this excellent book (TONY TULATHIMUTTE, author of REJECTION)
Smart, sharp and incredibly funny . . . Explores the slippery complicated space of fidelity, parenthood and marriage . . . Thrilling . . . I loved this book for its deftness, humour and its remarkable acuity (LYNN STEGER STRONG, author of FLIGHT)
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