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July 6, 2012
A momentous July 4th
New novel looks at how a family copes with death.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
Meet the Frankels. It is July 2005. Marilyn and David have been married for 42 years. They live in New York City and have a summer home in Lenox, Mass. They have three grown children: Clarissa, Lily and Noelle. Their son, Leo, a journalist, was killed while on assignment in Iraq a year earlier, and the whole family is gathering in Lenox for a memorial ceremony to be held on the day he died, July 4. Readers of The World Without You (Pantheon Books) by Joshua Henkin are much-honored guests at the family’s bittersweet reunion, being welcomed into everyone’s most intimate moments and thoughts over a whirlwind, emotion-filled long weekend.
Henkin first introduces the patriarch and matriarch, with Marilyn, having decided that David needs a sweater, charging off up the stairs “with such purpose ... that when she reaches the lip of their bedroom and steps inside, she’s startled to discover she’s forgotten what she came for.” She calls to David more than once. When he doesn’t respond, “For an instant, she panics: has he run off?”
When she gets back downstairs, she tells him that she was calling him, “‘Didn’t you hear me?’
“‘I guess not.’ David is out on the porch, reading the Times, reclined on one of their old lawn chairs. His legs stick out in front of him; he taps his feet against the edge of the chair.
“‘I got you this.’ She hands him the cardigan, which he takes obediently, but now he’s just laid it folded across his lap.
“‘You said you were cold.’
“‘Did I?’ His gaze is far off, tunneling past her.”
Their distant exchange continues, a discussion by two people who know each other so well, are so comfortable with each other, yet are both lonely, isolated in their own worlds of grief. Marilyn has decided to leave David: “When she made her announcement, David said he wanted to give it another shot, but they’ve been giving it shot after shot for a year now and she has no more left in her. There are days when they don’t talk at all. She has reminded him of the statistics, what happens to a marriage when you lose a child. Eighty percent, she’s heard, maybe even ninety.” David wanted to tell the family right away, but Marilyn “wanted to tell everyone in person, and to wait after the memorial was over. But the real reason – she has only half admitted this, even to herself – is that she fears if David told the girls, no one would come.”
Henkin sympathetically – and with humor – lays out every family member’s inner conflicts, grudges, misgivings, self-doubts, fears and sadnesses, as well as their hopes and happinesses, including those of Leo’s wife and their young son, who travel from California for the memorial, and of David’s mother, who wasn’t invited to the memorial, but ends up making an appearance. Henkin doesn’t play favorites, and readers will feel empathy for even the most obnoxious family members, because Henkin conveys so well their motivations and communicates the love that underlies even some of the worst actions. And that is what ultimately readers will take away from The World Without You, a reminder of the immense power of love, its potential to hurt and divide, but mainly its ability to heal and unite.
The Frankels plus their in-laws make up an incredibly diverse group of people, from Orthodox Jews to non-Jewish, from very old to very young, from left-wing to right-wing politically, from even-keeled to excitable emotionally, from Jerusalem to Berkeley geographically, from wealthy to getting by, etc., yet their blood ties and their commitment to each other are strong. They are certainly a family of individuals, and each copes with Leo’s death and approaches life in their own way, but, in the end, they are family – for better and for worse.
The World Without You is an extremely well-written book and a very engaging read. Much happens over the weekend and you’ll miss the Frankels when it’s over.
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