If I Forget You

April 18, 2016
Greene (The Headmaster’s Wife) begins this dramatic novel in 2012 with two former lovers, prize-winning poet Henry Gold and Connecticut housewife Margot Baldwin, catching sight of each other on a Manhattan street. Both are instantly thrown back in time to the campus of Bannister College in 1991, where the two first met. Despite being from two different worlds—he was Jewish and poor, she was WASPy and wealthy—they fell in love. Then a tragic circumstance forced the two of them apart, and they haven’t seen or been in contact with one another since. When they finally reconnect, all those old emotions come rushing back. Will Henry, settled into his comfortable divorced-dad life in Manhattan, and Margot, trapped in a loveless marriage in which she has two children, rekindle the love they lost 21 years ago, or will old secrets and hurts stand in the way of their future happiness? Greene applies a rigorous intelligence to a familiar premise. Piled-on melodramatic elements (an overbearing father, an act of violence) and a pat ending threaten to undermine the care with which he has created two believable and empathetic characters. Nevertheless, readers will be rooting to see Henry and Margot together again despite the odds. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff & Associates.

January 1, 2016

Founder of the Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2008, Greene broke out last year with The Headmaster's Wife, which sold 40,000 copies and received rapturous reviews. Here, Henry Gold, who climbed out of poverty to become a celebrated poet, and socially prominent Margot Fuller meet on a Manhattan street 20 years after their deep love affair crashed.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2016
Readers will welcome this new novel from the author of the much-admired The Headmaster's Wife (2014). Swaying softly between the heady days of their college romance in 1991 and the ho-hum existence of their middle-aged lives, Henry's and Margot's worlds figuratively collide on a crowded Manhattan street one afternoon, and suddenly all the heartbreak, betrayal, and yearning of the past 21 years comes rushing back. While students at elite Bannister College in upstate New York, rebellious artist Margot was in her natural environment of wealth and privilege, while Henry, a scholarship student from working-class Providence, was the odd man out. Yet his innate talent for poetry and romance spoke to Margot in a way no one else could, and their love affair seemed destined to defy the odds. Unfortunately, her father had other ideas, and the lovers were brutally forced apart in an episode torn straight from Shakespeare. Greene's candid tale of true love besieged by insurmountable hardship, only to be rekindled later in life, is delicate and tender, providing readers with a gentle escape and soulful interlude.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)