Writing recently in the New York Review of Books, novelist and critic Adelle Waldman wonders about what happened to the “suburban novel,” as exemplified by writers like Richard Yates (“Revolutionary Road”), John Cheever, John Updike, and a bit later, Richard Ford (“The Sportswriter”) and Rick Moody (“The Ice Storm”).

Waldman is not just talking about novels set in the suburbs, such as Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections,” but the “suburban novel,” that “questioned the idea that undergirds suburbia: that marriage-kids-house-car is the basis for a good life.”

Just in time to challenge Waldman, we have Erin Somers’ new novel, “The Ten Year Affair,” which seems to fit the “suburban novel” to the letter. It manages to deftly balance humor and heart throughout as we see what the domestic life looks like for the millennial generation.

Technically the characters don’t live in the suburbs, instead existing in a small Hudson Valley town, that, thanks to the increasing cost of living with children in New York City, has become a place for city refugees, but the milieu is nonetheless familiar.

The novel centers on Cora, a mother of two (including a new baby) married to Eliot. Cora meets Sam at a parents-and-babies class and shortly after conjures a fantasy affair with Sam that runs parallel with her more mundane life with Eliot.

As Cora is moving through a meaningless job, and missing sex with Eliot, whose ardor has been dimmed by anti-depressants and a nightly dose of weed to help him sleep, she imagines a passionate sexual affair with Sam, meeting up in a hotel in a neighboring town to explore mutual carnal desires. The novel moves between these threads with ease as we become invested in both of Cora’s lives.

In real life, the real Cora also grows closer to the real Sam, and while we understand that reality cannot become fantasy, that doesn’t mean that a real affair couldn’t happen.

At its heart, “The Ten Year Affair” is a comedy, with a number of set pieces that allows Somers to poke at the absurdities of upper middle class parenting, as in an early scene when Cora and Sam bond over their confused wonder at a woman from class they call “broccoli mom” trying to command her infant to go on command into a portable toilet.

Somers mines depth from important supporting characters, Eliot, and also Sam’s wife, Lily. Eliot is a little anxious and insecure, but he also loves and trusts his wife and excels at his job as a book editor. Lily is a hard-driving professional, smart and spiky, but admirable in her willingness to be so. The families become fully entangled, causing further complications.

I don’t sense that Somers set out to write a “suburban novel” so much as this is the kind of book that comes out when a sharp observer of human nature puts her mind to questioning what sorts of structures truly undergird the lives we choose to live.

Or do we choose? This is part of what the novel explores: the inertia that can give way to ennui, which can then lead to choices that result in big consequences.

As to where the “suburban novel” has been, I think it’s merely a matter of having had to wait until the millennials of Somers’ generation matured to the point where these questions have true salience. Gen Xers like Franzen were already convinced — including by writers like Cheever, Updike, et al. — that the suburban life was no good.

By the end of the “The Ten Year Affair,” we have a rich exploration of what a decent life might be.

John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “Every Fire You Tend” by Sema Kaygusuz
2. “The Premonition” by Banana Yoshimoto
3. “There There” by Tommy Orange
4. “Wandering Stars” by Tommy Orange
5. “Infinite Country” by Patricia Engel

— Tarah W., Lisbon, Portugal

For Tarah, I’m recommending a somewhat odd, but also affecting book, “Negative Space” by Gillian Linden.

1. “The Waters” by Bonnie Jo Campbell
2. “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” by Olga Tokarczuk
3. “Educated” by Tara Westover
4. “Uncommon Measure” by Natalie Hodges
5. “The World That We Knew” by Alice Hoffman

— Lourdes G., Chicago

I think Rachel Ingalls’ slim, strange “Mrs. Caliban” will connect with Lourdes.

1. “The Measure” by Nikki Erlick
2. “Wanted: Toddler’s Personal Assistant” by Stephanie Kiser
3. “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt
4. “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin
5. “The Circus Train” by Amita Parikh

— Anna W., Normal

I have yet to find the reader who isn’t taken in by Karen Joy Fowler’s “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,” and I think Anna will be no exception.

Get a reading from the Biblioracle

Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.