Review by New York Times Review
GRIEF can be a divisive force, especially within families. Sorrow can't really be shared, as Joshua Henkin illustrates in his insightful third novel, "The World Without You." The book opens a year after the death of Leo Frankel, a Daniel Pearl-like journalist killed on assignment in Iraq, as his family gathers at their summer home in the Berkshires for a memorial. On their first night together, his mother drops a bomb. "I'm leaving Daddy," she announces at the dinner table. It's a characteristically blunt declaration from Marilyn, a woman who has dedicated the past year to writing op-ed articles against the war, partly to ensure that Leo's story remain in the public consciousness as it is always foremost in her own. Her husband, David, is no comfort, mostly because she doesn't want to be comforted. She's convinced that her grief is a cloud from which she will never emerge. To explain why they're separating, Marilyn shares an anecdote. At a party, when a stranger asked the couple how many children they had, David immediately answered three, while she said four. To her, this proves their incompatibility. A year after Leo's death, Marilyn views the signs of anyone moving on as a betrayal. This makes for some interesting complications. Leo is survived by three older sisters, all caught up in personal dramas that follow them to the Berkshires. Clarissa, 39, desperately wants to conceive, an obsession now threatening her own marriage. Her younger sisters, Lily and Noelle, never got along, and Leo's death only provides new ammunition. "It sounds like you're engaged in competitive grieving," Lily's boyfriend remarks. "If I am, I've lost," she replies. Noelle was the baby in the family until Leo usurped her place, creating her appetite for negative attention. She was once renowned as a high school bad girl before she moved to Israel, converted to Orthodox Judaism and - horrifying her liberal family - voted for Bush, twice. But this is only a political novel insofar as politics provide one more way in which this family is divided. "The World Without You" definitely favors character over plot. The most dramatic event, Leo's death, has already happened. Set over three days, the book gives the illusion of progressing in real time, as if it could chronicle every scene, excluding no line of dialogue, juxtaposing the banal, the poignant and the pointed. Henkin rotates through his cast, moving elegantly from one perspective to another and providing ample background to illuminate the tensions each person feels in the present. The actual memorial service for Leo is awkward and contrived, which is the point. When someone dies, we are called upon to perform our grief, and it often becomes distorted under scrutiny. An unprepared Noelle has to say the Kaddish after her volatile husband disappears in the wake of a fight. His prolonged absence provides a steady sense of dread propelling the novel toward its conclusion. Henkin excels at the female point of view - a good thing, since this novel features six strong and distinct women. (And hardly surprising, since any writer who names characters Clarissa and Lily better share some sensibilities with Virginia Woolf.) One of the best characters here is Leo's widow, Thisbe, who's harboring a secret: before his death, she had asked for a separation. Thisbe, in graduate school at Berkeley, resented having to care for their toddler while Leo worked overseas. Over the past year, she has fallen in love with a fellow student, and is already planning to move in with him. She hopes 3-year-old Calder won't mention her new boyfriend in front of the Frankels, especially since the boy calls him "Daddy." At first, Thisbe remembers, she tried carefully to reassure her son that her boyfriend would never replace his father. "As if that was what concerned him. The fact is, Calder wants to replace his father. He's embarrassed by Leo's absence: all his friends have fathers, and he wants one, too." For Calder, grief - like the father he lost - is an abstraction. Moving on is part of growing up. Henkin's prose is elegant but unobtrusive, always serving the characters. Although the cast is large, you get to know them deeply, like real people, and while they're not all easy to like, neither are the members of any family. They want to be drawn together by their loss, and don't know how to be. But by the end, they've moved somewhat closer, as Henkin brings them to a moving resolution that feels authentically possible, each person advancing only as far as he or she could. Of the three Frankel girls, Clarissa probably loved Leo the most. At his memorial service, she confesses that as a girl she considered herself his true mother, pressing her face to the NICU window behind which he was incubated as a preemie, and later sending him care packages when he was in college. Learning how much she cared for him sheds light on her obsession with getting pregnant When Leo died, Clarissa not only lost a brother, she also lost the maternal role that she played in that relationship, and may never get to play again. "The World Without You" shows how loss forces people to reconceive of themselves, a painful but necessary transformation. Malena Watrous is the author of the novel "If You Follow Me."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 28, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review
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).--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The Frankel family has gathered at their summer home in the Berkshires to attend a memorial service for their youngest sibling, Leo, who was killed while reporting in Iraq. Parents Marilyn and David are struggling with their 40-year marriage while three daughters wrestle with infertility, unemployment, urban ennui, and assorted relationship tensions. Leo's widow, Thisbe, and young son Calder fly in from California with news of their own. For the few days surrounding July 4, 2005, the family members struggle with their shared pasts, uncertain futures, and each other. VERDICT Henkin (director of Brooklyn College's MFA program in fiction writing, Matrimony; Swimming Across the Hudson) might gain some new readers with this honest and well-paced look at an American family. Point this one out to contemporary fiction fans of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, or the works of Rick Moody, Richard Russo, Philip Roth, and John Updike.-Jenn B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll. Northeast (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by New York Times Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
