The Rest of Us

As a college student, Terry fell madly and destructively in love with Rhinehart, her older, famous poetry professor, tumbling into a relationship from which she never fully recovered. Now, fifteen years later, she is single, still living in the New York City walk-up she moved into after college, and languishing as a photographer’s assistant, having long abandoned her own art. But when she stumbles upon Rhinehart’s obituary online listing his many accomplishments, she finds herself taking stock of the ways her life has not lived up to her youthful expectations—and disproportionately distraught at the thought that she’ll never see him again.

Imagine her surprise when, a few weeks later, she bumps into him: very much alive, married, and Christmas shopping at Bloomingdale’s. What ensues is an intense and beautiful friendship, an unexpected second act that pushes Terry to finally reckon with the consequences of their past and the depth of her own aspirations—and to begin to come back alive as an artist and a woman.

As much a love letter to New York City and the struggles of its artists as it is a sharp and stirring novel of the heart, Jessica Lott’s debut sets out to answer questions that haunt us all: Why do certain people come into our lives and have such an enduring effect on us? How and why do we become stuck in our lives? And is love really always the answer? As Brigid Pasulka, author of A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True, writes, “The Rest of Us deftly illuminates not only the loneliness of the city but also the struggles we all face in transplanting the fantasies of our youth into our adult realities.”