'The Ten Year Affair,' 'Sex of the Midwest' look at the role of sex in domestic life

Summary

NPR Book of the Day – November 21, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode, hosted by Andrew Limbong, explores how sexuality and desire intersect with everyday domestic life, focusing on two recent books: Erin Somers’ The Ten Year Affair and Robin Ryle’s Sex of the Midwest. Through interviews with both authors, the episode delves into the shifting landscape of middle-class American relationships, generational anxieties, and the underappreciated complexity of small-town sexual lives.

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Segment 1: Erin Somers on "The Ten Year Affair"

Discussion Begins: 01:35

Main Ideas

• The novel follows Cora, a married woman living in a Hudson Valley suburb, who becomes consumed by fantasies about a man she meets in a baby care class, blurring the line between what is real and imagined.
• Somers updates classic domestic drama—à la Cheever or Yates—by showing that today’s middle-class dreams (the house, the family, the picket fence) are far less attainable, and that precariousness shapes intimacy.
• The book uniquely uses a “multiverse” narrative, splitting between Cora’s fantasy affair and her real-life circumstances, examining the emotional terrain of infidelity and longing.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• On Attraction Beyond Marriage

  • Andrew Limbong (AL): "You ever have a crush on someone? Not your partner... do you ever think about what would happen if, or how would it go if you grazed their hand or kissed or found yourselves in a hotel room together?" (01:35)
  • Somers notes Cora is drawn to Sam partly because he is “anyone but her husband” and their chemistry is inexplicable.
    • Erin Somers (ES): "There is a feeling of him just being anyone but her husband at first, just a feeling of the other and a feeling of someone unfamiliar... They have a sort of chemistry that they can't explain." (02:34)

• Middle-Class Malaise in the Modern Era

  • Cora doesn’t quite fit the suburban ideal, feeling deflated that her life is “not sexy, not a fantasy.”
    • ES: "She is a little bit deflated that this is where she ended up. And, you know, it's not sexy, it's not a fantasy. It's taking your kids to school every day and then doing your remote job." (03:00)
  • The novel’s characters are doing “just well enough to feel guilty”—scraping into homeownership and apologizing for it.
    • ES: "This very small milieu of downwardly mobile, overeducated millennials who are clinging to the bottom rung of the middle class and feel a little guilty about it because they're supposed to not even have been able to enter the middle class." (04:47)

• On Generational Differences and Domestic Narratives

  • Unlike the postwar era, today’s middle class faces heightened precarity, making traditional milestones seem both more fraught and less meaningful.
    • ES: "It's not that easy to have a comfortable life anymore... None of these signifiers even mean the same thing. Marriage doesn't mean the same thing. So I wanted to dig into what that looks like now and how things have gotten even worse and in some ways, how they've gotten better." (06:56)
  • Men doing more domestic work today is a positive shift, even if life is more materially challenging.

Notable Quotes

• “You don't see a multiverse plot mixed with domestic fiction much, so I thought it could bring a real freshness to the subject matter.” – Erin Somers (03:43)
• “It all feels very temporary, like it could go away. And it feels like you're not showing class solidarity if you get some tiny scrap of something, you know, some modest home or something like that.” – Erin Somers (05:38)
• “Mostly white. And that is part of their blinkered worldview and part of the comedy around their blinkered worldview.” – Erin Somers, defining the book’s demographic focus (06:24)

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Segment 2: Robin Ryle on "Sex of the Midwest"

Discussion Begins: 08:53

Main Ideas

• Robin Ryle’s story collection links over 65 characters in Lanier, Indiana, after they receive a mysterious sex survey in their inboxes, exposing the nuanced, unpredictable, and sometimes hidden sex lives of small-town America.
• Ryle, a professor of sociology and gender studies, draws on her own town as inspiration, challenging stereotypes of rural homogeneity and conservatism.
• The pandemic's impact on rural society, relationships, and self-understanding features strongly in the collection.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• The Survey as Catalyst & Varied Reactions

  • The sex survey triggers a range of responses:
    • Don Blankman, an older ex-coach, is “shocked and a little outraged, also a little confused because he’s not real great with technology.” He reacts by running for school board after hearing of a local STD outbreak. (10:19)
    • Loretta of the health department is indifferent to the survey but obsessed with stopping a rogue hot dog cart.
    • The survey appears in inboxes across the town, but many never open it, providing both shock and titillation.

• Complexity and Diversity of Small-Town Lives

  • Ryle counters stereotypes by revealing unexpected aspects of rural life—such as frequent drag brunches—and emphasizes the richness beneath the surface.
    • RR: “I think those narratives often miss the complexity and really just the weirdness of life in small towns… That’s not my experience in the small town where I live, I confess.” (12:46)
  • Even listeners and workshoppers expressed disbelief at the amount of queer culture in small-town Indiana.
    • RR: “In the small town where I live, there are quite a few drag brunches. Drag bingo. And I think that's part of, you know, part of the misconception.” (13:34)

• The Pandemic’s Effect on Meaning and Migration

  • The stories frequently touch on characters' grappling with the pandemic’s aftermath—fears of mortality, existential uncertainty, and geographic reshuffling.
    • RR: "One of the things the pandemic really brought home was thinking about death and a fear of death.” (11:24)
  • A sense of anti-climax dominates, as characters realize “things didn't turn out the way that maybe we thought they would or people told us they would." (14:44)

• Rachel the Bartender – A Standout Character

  • Rachel, who hates Bloody Marys, values her unique vantage point as a bartender—able to listen or disengage at will.
  • She turns to writing as a way to process post-pandemic life and personal upheaval.
    • RR: “[Rachel] becomes a writer to make sense of her experiences after the pandemic.” (14:44)

• What’s Worth Preserving about Small-Town Life

  • The value of knowing and co-existing with people who are very different, which makes dehumanization harder and community more resilient.
    • RR: “In a small town, because you’re living intimately with people who are very different from you, it makes it a little bit harder to dehumanize your neighbors.” (15:46)

Notable Quotes

• “I think of the book... as a love letter to small towns.” – Robin Ryle (12:46)
• “People think small towns are homogenous... Everyone's kind of boring and straight and conservative. And that's not my experience in the small town where I live, I confess.” – Robin Ryle (12:46)
• "We had this promise if we could just get through, things would be okay, and things didn't turn out the way that maybe we thought they would or people told us they would." – Robin Ryle (14:44)
• "Because you're living intimately with people who are very different from you, it makes it a little bit harder to dehumanize your neighbors." – Robin Ryle (15:46)

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Memorable Moments & Timestamps

• [02:34] Somers on the initial, nameless attraction between Cora and Sam
• [03:43] The decision to employ a “multiverse” structure in domestic fiction
• [05:28] Limbong and Somers bonding over apologizing for homeownership luxury
• [06:24] Direct address of whiteness and worldview in the setting
• [13:34] Surprising reality of drag culture in small-town Indiana

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Conclusion

This energizing episode juxtaposes two nuanced looks at the interplay between sexuality and quotidian life: Somers’ millennial malaise in suburbia, haunted by both longing and economic anxiety, and Ryle’s quirky, diverse midwestern town, quietly upending stereotypes. Both works underscore how intimacy, fantasy, and mundanity blend in ways that defy the clichés of their respective milieus and generations.

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Books Featured:

• The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers
• Sex of the Midwest by Robin Ryle

Host: Andrew Limbong
Guest Interviewers: Scott Simon (Sex of the Midwest segment)
Guests: Erin Somers, Robin Ryle

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For more information and sign-ups, visit npr.org/newsletterbooks.

Transcript

[Andrew Limbong]

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. Today we're gonna talk about sex. Not explicitly or anything, but actually, now that I think about it, the books we're gonna talk about today are less about the act of sex and more about how our sex lives map onto our everyday lives, our jobs, our bills, our friends and neighbors. Up ahead, a sex survey gets sent around a small Midwestern town. But first, Aaron Summers novel, the Ten Year Affair is a bit of a throwback to a certain style of literary domestic dramas that don't seem to be super in vogue these days. Think work by John Cheever or Richard Yates. But Somers says what makes middle class malaise different for this generation is that, well, that house with a white picket fence isn't as attainable anymore, and that does affect your sex life. Margin my conversation with Aaron Summers after the break.

[Aaron Summers]

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[Andrew Limbong]

To all the married folks listening, let me ask you a question. You ever have a crush on someone? Not your partner, maybe someone at work or in your friend group? Nothing too serious. But then do you ever think about what would happen if, or how would it go if you grazed their hand or kissed or found yourselves in a hotel room together? In the new novel the Ten Year Affair, our protagonist Korra thinks about it a lot, so much so that it blurs the line between what's real and what's just fantasy. Or maybe fantasies are real. Either way, author Aaron Summers joins us now from my New York bureau. Hey, Aaron.

[Aaron Summers]

Hey. How are you?

[Andrew Limbong]

You know, I'm pretty good. This is this book has rocked me a little bit. So Cora lives in a small suburb in the Hudson Valley. When we meet her, right? She's married. She's got two kids. She's got a toddler and an infant. And she Sam at a baby care class. What is about him, about Sam that attracts her?

[Aaron Summers]

Well, I think that there is a feeling of him just being anyone but her husband at first, just a feeling of the other and a feeling of someone unfamiliar. But he also is Charming and handsome and they have a sort of chemistry that they can't explain.

[Andrew Limbong]

Did Cora think she'd end up in the burbs with a house and a husband and kids?

[Aaron Summers]

I don't think anybody living in Brooklyn thinks that that's going to happen to them. I certainly didn't. Part of it is that she is a little bit deflated that this is where she ended up. And, you know, it's not sexy, it's not a fantasy. It's taking your kids to school every day and then doing your remote job. So, yeah, I think she had more glamorous ideas for herself.

[Andrew Limbong]

So the book sort of splits off into two parallel tracks, Right. Like I'd mentioned before, there's like the fantasy version where Cora has an affair with Sam and then you get reality. Why was this your approach to writing about infidelity?

[Aaron Summers]

Well, the conceit came to me intuitively, actually. I sat down to write and I did not know that it was going to go in that direction until I typed the word multiverse into the draft and then I thought I should follow that. That would be a really cool idea. You don't see a multiverse plot mixed with domestic fiction much, so I thought it could bring a real freshness to the subject matter. Then there was the question of execution, whether I could pull it off. But I thought it would be really fun to try, so I followed it.

[Andrew Limbong]

There are some details in this book that are unique to a certain class of people. Elistus, Corin, Elliot. They're not rich, right. They're not loaded, but they're doing, I think, like just well enough to feel guilty about it. Right. There's moments where after they buy a house and people come over, they have to point out, be like, oh, but you know, this thing, there's this problem with it. There's that problem with it. Sort of apologizing for having, you know, the scratch to buy a house. What do you think is driving that sort of guilt?

[Aaron Summers]

Well, it's a send up of this very narrow segment of the population near where I live. This very small milieu of downwardly mobile, over educated millennials who are clinging to the bottom rung of the middle class and feel a little guilty about it because they're supposed to not even have been able to enter the middle class. People who do sometimes feel a compulsion to apologize for it or to disavow the house to say, you know, it's a pretty crummy house and here's what's wrong with it, which I find kind of funny. And I wanted to poke fun at a little bit.

[Andrew Limbong]

I've since caught myself doing it since I read your book. Then had people over to the crib, and I was like, oh, leaking roof. And it's like, I think I'm doing that thing. I don't know where it's coming from.

[Aaron Summers]

I mean, it doesn't come from a bad place. It comes from a place of precarity. Like, we've been so precarious people my age for so many years that it's like it all feels very temporary, like it could go away. And it feels like you're not showing class solidarity if you get some tiny scrap of something, you know, some modest home or something like that.

[Andrew Limbong]

You know, when we're talking about this very specific milia that you had mentioned, like, we're talking about white people, Right? We're talking about. Or mostly right. Is that who you're thinking of? Like the. The. When I'm thinking of the Hudson Valley suburbs, it is a mostly white place, right?

[Aaron Summers]

Mostly white. And that is part of their blinkered worldview and part of the comedy around their blinkered worldview.

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah. When I pitched this book to my editor, I sort of made, like, a funny joke that, like, well, us millennials are now, like, old enough that we're in long, unhappy marriages and getting divorced and stuff like that.

[Scott Simon]

Right.

[Andrew Limbong]

But in talking to you about these domestic dramas, it seems like these stories are repeatable throughout generations. But I'm wondering, what do you think makes it unique for this generation?

[Aaron Summers]

The reason I wanted to write about it is I was thinking about some of those, you know, material conditions that caused the infidelity novel boom after World War II. And I was thinking about the middle class then versus the middle class now. And those books are very much about maybe coming back from the war, trying to make a life, and finding middle class empty and difficult to deal with for nebulous reasons. And I thought, well, things have only gotten more difficult since then. You know, like, it's. It's not that easy to have a comfortable life anymore. And it's not that easy to, you know, have the sort of stereotypical two cars, house in the suburbs, take your kids on vacation. Like, this is not an attainable thing anymore. And none of these signifiers even mean the same thing. Marriage doesn't mean the same thing. So I wanted to sort of dig into what that looks like now and how things have gotten even worse and in some ways, how they've gotten better. You know, men do some of the domestic work that has only improved. Sure.

[Andrew Limbong]

Yeah. That's author Erin Summers. Her new book, the Ten Year Affair, comes out Tuesday. Erin, thank you so much.

[Aaron Summers]

Thanks for having me.

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[Andrew Limbong]

Robin Ryle's short story collection, Sex of the Midwest is all about opening up secrets. But Ryle tells NPR Scott Simon that it shouldn't be a secret that people in small towns lead weird, complex, interesting sex lives. Here's Scott.

[Scott Simon]

One morning with fog on the river, all inboxes in Lanier, Indiana, population 12,234.

[Robin Ryle]

Receive an email invitation to participate. Sexual practices in a small Midwestern town. As subjects line went, it left a lot to be desired. It wasn't surprising that the email ended up in the spam folders of half the people in the near and there it remained undiscovered. Another fifth went to email addresses that no one checked or had long since forgotten the passwords for. And so these people, too, were saved the shock or titillation or outrage.

[Scott Simon]

Ah, but maybe not for long. Robin Ryle's new book, Sex of the Midwest, knits more than a dozen small town short stories into the lives of more than 65 characters, some of whom find the survey pushing and pulling on parts of their lives they thought had been pinned into place. Robin Ryle is a professor of sociology and gender studies at Hanover College in Indiana, and she joins us from the studios of wfpl, Louisville Public Media. Thanks so much for being with us.

[Robin Ryle]

Thanks for having me.

[Scott Simon]

What's the range of reactions that roll through this town?

[Robin Ryle]

Well, Don Blankman, who is the character in the very first story, is outraged coach. Don Blankman, a former basketball coach, retired, now recovering from COVID waiting for a lung transplant. He's shocked and a little outraged, also a little confused because he's not real great with technology. But at the same time, he finds out from his wife that there's a outbreak of STDs at the junior high school. And so he decides that he has to do something about it. His solution to that is to run for the school board. Loretta, who works for the health department, is kind of indifferent to the survey. She's not really titillated by sex, but she is sort of obsessed with making sure that the hot dog vendor, the hot dog cart guy, is prevented from running his hot dog cart, which is what the city government has tasked her with. So she has a hot dog guy obsession.

[Scott Simon]

What are some of the ways in which the pandemic changed Lanier that we should know?

[Robin Ryle]

I think for Don Blankman, the character, one of the things that I was thinking about when I wrote Don is trying to get myself inside the head of a certain type of person who thinks very differently from me. And I think Don and a lot of people like him. One of the things the pandemic really brought home was thinking about death and a fear of death. And so one of the things that Don's confronting, he hasn't thought about his own death. And I think that's one of the problems with a lot of people in society today. There's a scene where he literally thinks that death has come for him in the form of these two women tourists, and literally gets up and runs away. So I think one of the things is thinking about death, thinking about meaning. So Rachel, the bartender throughout the arc of the story, becomes interested in writing, goes to a writers conference. I think she's thinking about what is the meaning in the face of the pandemic. There's a story about a kid who is in San Francisco and decides to move to Lanier. And I think there was a lot of transition thinking about where do we want to be now? So a lot of geographic displacement that happened in the wake of the pandemic. So, yeah, I think those are some of the of the threads.

[Scott Simon]

Are you from a town that reminds you of Lanier, or is it vice versa?

[Robin Ryle]

I live in a town that is very much like Lanier and very much inspired these stories. So I think of the book one way I've described the book is a love letter to small towns. I. I think we have a certain narrative about small towns and in rural parts of the country, especially in places like Indiana. But I think those narratives often miss the complexity and really just the weirdness of life in small towns. I think people think small towns are homogenous. Everyone's the same. Everyone's kind of boring and straight and conservative. And that's not my experience in the small town where I live, I confess.

[Scott Simon]

And I'm not proud of this. I was surprised to find a drag brunch in Lanier, Indiana.

[Robin Ryle]

Yeah. And when I workshopped these stories with people from around the country, and I had people say to me, I don't believe that a small town of 12,234 people would have this many drag events. But I have to say, in the small town where I live, there are quite a few drag brunches. Drag bingo. And I think that's part of, you know, part of the misconception.

[Scott Simon]

I love the character of Rachel, the bartender. First off, she hates Bloody Marys, doesn't she?

[Aaron Summers]

She does.

[Scott Simon]

She likes the fact that people can open up to her. She hears a lot of good stories, but if they become tiresome, she can just move on. Right?

[Robin Ryle]

Yes. Yes. I've never worked as a bartender. I worked as a waitress in college quite a bit. I spend a bit of time in our local bar in Madison. And it is the beauty in the end, you can always say, you know, oh, I've got to get those drinks, or I've got to get that table and move away if people become too annoying.

[Scott Simon]

What. And I'll put it this way, what drives Rachel to commit literature?

[Robin Ryle]

That's a good question. You know, I think she goes to the Writers Conference purely because she wants to stay in the Virginia Woolf room. But then I think she becomes a writer to make sense of her experiences after the pandemic. She has a little bit of a breakdown at the Writers Conference thinking about what am I doing here? And I think in a lot of the stories, you see one of the kids who comes back, he talks about everyone promised us after the pandemic everything would be better. And he's betrayed by. That's not actually true. It's after the pandemic, or at least the worst of the pandemic, and things aren't really better. So I think part of Rachel and everyone in the story is dealing with this sense that we had this promise if we could just get through, things would be okay, and things didn't turn out the way that maybe we thought they would or people told us they would.

[Scott Simon]

What do you like about small town life? What made you want to, in a sense, speak up for it?

[Robin Ryle]

It's a very difficult time historically, right now in the United States. There's a lot of anger. And I think the tendency to dehumanize each other is very easy and very tempting. And I think in a small town, because you're living intimately with people who are very different from you, it makes it a little bit harder to dehumanize your neighbors, to think of them as not like you in some ways, even if, like Don Blankman, they think very differently from you. So I think there's a kind of important way in which we we have to live next to each other and we have to figure out ways to to get along.

[Scott Simon]

Robin Wild's new book of stories, Sex of the Midwest, thank you so much for being with us.

[Robin Ryle]

Thank you.

[Andrew Limbong]

And that's it for this week on NPR's Book of the Day. If you want more, you can sign up for our [e-mail] Newsletter Books. I'm Andrew Limbong. This podcast is produced by Chloe Weiner and edited by Megan Sullivan with help from Ivy Buck. Our founding editor is Petra Mayer. The show elements for this week were produced and edited by Sarah Robbins, Jordan Marie Smith, Samantha Balaban, Melissa Gray, Kir Wakim, Patrick, Jan Watanan, Julie Dbrock, Taylor Haney, Justine Kenan, Jason Fuller and Ryan Bank. Yolanda Sanguini is our executive producer. Thanks for listening.

[Aaron Summers]

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[Andrew Limbong]

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[Aaron Summers]

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[Andrew Limbong]

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[Aaron Summers]

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