The World Without You

Starred review from April 23, 2012
Like a more bittersweet version of Jonathan Tropper’s This Is Where I Leave You or a less chilly variation on Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, Henkin (Matrimony) tenderly explores family dynamics in this novel about the ties that bind, and even lacerate. One year after the death of their kidnapped journalist son, Leo, in Iraq, David and Marilyn Frankel, non-practicing Jews, call their entire mishpocha to their summer home in the Berkshires to attend his memorial service: Clarissa and her husband, Nathaniel, who, after years of putting off parenthood, are having a difficult time getting pregnant; Lily, a D.C. lawyer who shows up without Malcolm, her restaurateur boyfriend of 10 years; Noelle, an Orthodox Jew who arrives from Jerusalem with her husband, Amram, and their four children; and Thisbe, Leo’s widow, a grad student who flies in from Berkeley with their three-year-old son, Calder. Over the course of the Fourth of July holiday, David and Marilyn will make a stunning announcement; Thisbe will reveal a secret; a game of Celebrity will cause Amram to drive off into the night; Leo will be remembered; and someone will pee on the carpet. The author has created an empathetic cast of characters that the reader will love spending time with, even as they behave like fools and hurt one another. An intelligently written novel that works as a summer read and for any other time of the year. Agent: Lisa Bankoff, ICM.

Starred review from June 1, 2012
A family melodrama that encompasses both tragedy and farce, as an upper-middle-class clan gathers to mourn a dead son and perhaps move on. When conventionalists claim, "They don't write novels like that anymore," this is the sort of novel they mean. Yet the very familiarity and durability of the setup suggests that the traditional novel remains very much alive and healthy as well, if the narrative momentum and depth of character here are proof of vitality. As suggested by his previous novel, the generically titled Matrimony (2007), Henkin isn't the type to offer literary surprises. The novel transpires over a holiday weekend, which sees an extended family reuniting to mark the first anniversary of the death of the beloved son, a journalist killed in Iraq. As you'd expect, someone will say things that have previously been left unsaid. Someone will come to terms with the past in a way that puts the future in fresh perspective. Each member of the family will have a heart-to-heart conversation with every other one. By the end of the weekend, things will have changed. The particulars: The son's death has proven so difficult for his mother to overcome that she wants to divorce her husband (who has been mourning in a different way). The oldest daughter and her husband, a celebrated academic, have a "workmanlike marriage," though her brother's death makes her want what she previously didn't, to have children. The second daughter has been with her partner for more than a decade and seems more fulfilled than her married sisters. The youngest daughter now lives in Israel as an Orthodox Jew with her recently unemployed husband, though her promiscuity had made her a scandal in her formative years. The son's widow has fallen in love. A very rich grandmother hovers over the plot. Which relationships will endure, which will collapse, and which will change over the course of a long weekend? A novel that satisfies all expectations in some very familiar ways.

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January 1, 2012

Like Henkin's Swimming Across the Hudson and subsequent Matrimony, this third novel focuses on family. It seems like a step forward, though the first two titles both won Notable Book Status at various publications. Here, the Frankels have gathered at their summer home for the memorial service of youngest son Leo, a journalist killed on assignment in Iraq. With a reading-group guide and an eight-city tour.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2012
A year after journalist Leo Frankel's death in Iraq, his family descends on their vacation home in the Berkshires for a memorial. His parents, still undone by their grief, announce that they're separating after 40 years of marriage, while his three sisters deal with their own issues. Clarissa, once a promising cellist, is struggling with infertility. Lily, a passionate lawyer who relishes arguments, is angry at everybody. Noelle, a wild child turned Orthodox Jew living in Israel with her husband and four children, feels like an outsider. And then there's Thisbe, Leo's young widow and the mother of their three-year-old son, who still feels at odds with her mother-in-law and is afraid to indicate, in any way, that she is moving on with her life. Over the Fourth of July weekend, the family members struggle to get through the memorial ceremony and to understand what being part of a family really means. Henkin (Matrimony, 2007) writes low-key, character-driven fiction, and his latest will appeal to lovers of such family stories as Zoe Heller's The Believers (2009) and Eleanor Brown's Weird Sisters (2011).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)