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.

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)

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)

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

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.

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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