By Joshua Henkin
New York, Pantheon, 2012
336 pages Fiction
I read an article recently about people who divorce in their
later years. The Wall
Street Journal called it “Grey Divorce.” The article said that the more
than 600,000 people over the age of 50 divorce every year. For many there is
the feeling that “I have to fulfill myself now or I never will.” One researcher
calls the reason for grey divorces “complex marital biographies.”
Marilyn and David Frankel in the novel The World without You
by Joshua Henkin are in their early 70s when Marilyn decides she wants a
divorce. Their family is gathering for the Independence Day holiday and as the
novel opens, the couple is trying to decide if they are going to tell their
children that they are separating during their weekend together. The reason for
the divorce seemingly is Marilyn’s restlessness but we soon discover that the
deeper reason is that they had lost their son Leo the year before. Leo had been
a journalist and was killed in the Iraq War. Marilyn has spent the year since
she lost her son becoming a political activist, attending war protests, writing
endless op eds, and hating George Bush. For her, the personal has become
political. Marilyn feels that David has not faced his grief, and she is angry
with him for being so passive about their son’s death.
The family is gathering at the family cottage in
Massachusetts for a private memorial service. The funeral the year before had
been a media circus and they all felt the need to do something more intimate as
they raise a gravestone in his memory.
There are three remaining children Lily, Clarissa and
Noelle. Each woman and their spouses have mourned the loss of their brother in
their own ways; ways that become obvious as their histories unfold. They are
extremely angry at their mother when she announces the separation on the very
first evening of the gathering. It is immediately apparent to them that this is
all her idea.
Leo’s widow Thisbe and her young son have flown in from San
Francisco for the memorial. Thisbe is feeling guilty because she is beginning to
move on in her life after this first horrendous year as a widow, and she feels
slightly estranged from her in-law family, although Lily has been one of her
best friends. She is the character I identified with the most. Moving on after
losing a spouse is a challenge with a lot of guilt attached.
The most interesting character is Noelle, the youngest
sister. She had been a rebellious teenager who married a high school friend,
and they became Orthodox Jews and moved to Jerusalem. The mother of 4 sons, she
returns home to the old rivalries and parental estrangement that caused her to rebel
in the first place. She may be the most fully realized of the Frankel sisters
and without a doubt the sister who grows the most from the experience of burying
her brother.
As the weekend stumbles forward, all the characters are revealed and
the story unfolds. The reviewer in the Boston Globe says: “In three days of
togetherness, including the memorial and unveiling service, members will harbor
secrets, tell lies, and rediscover themselves and one another.”
A simple story? Yes. A story that’s been told before? Yes.
But I am not at all sure that I have read a book where the story was told
better than this one. I became thoroughly engaged with the story as the family struggles
its way through this ghastly weekend—burying their brother and accepting their
parent’s divorce at the same time. And for the most part they don’t respond in
loving and accepting ways. Even though the narration never flags, the crux of story isn’t
in the narration but in the characters.
The reviewer in Commentary
magazine says that few authors are as good at characterization as Henkin. He
says: “Henkin is not one of the Frankels; he has no stake in the outcome of
their disagreements and dysfunction. He has only a good deal of affection for
them, and a good deal of pity, and the confidence that his reader will come to
feel about them much as he does.”
In an interview in the Huffington
Post, Henkin said that the book was an outgrowth of some thinking he had
done about parents losing children. He came to realize that losing a child (no
matter what age) was different from losing a spouse. The surviving spouse moves
on but the parent never can. I saw that happen in my own life experience. My
in-laws were never able to overcome the loss of their son. They became old
right before my eyes and it took years off their lives. I, on the other hand,
was able to move on and eventually find a new life for myself.
As the weekend ends and the daughters, spouses and children
return to their homes, Marilyn and David look at each other and realize that
they ultimately don’t want to leave each other; that their history has bound
them together in ways that shouldn't be severed; that their love for each other has
weathered another challenge, and they are at peace together. In the final
scene, David is deciding to ride his bike, something he hasn’t done for a long
time. Marilyn goes out to help him. “You have to keep pedaling,” she says. If
you come to an obstacle you just steer out of the way.” And then she says, “I
won’t let you fall.”
I highly recommend The World without You. It will be on my
list of best books for the year.
Here are two good reviews: http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2012/07/21/the-world-without-you-joshua-henkin/p45eCAIhYIIs4vVIhB5QDO/story.html
The interview in the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/teddy-wayne/interview-with-joshua-hen_b_1604068.html
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