‘The World Without You’: Three days and eight points of view

‘The World Without You,” Joshua Henkin’s poignant and moving novel, takes place entirely over three muggy days of the July 4th holiday weekend in 2005 when the entire Frankel family has gathered at their summerhouse in the Berkshires to mourn the death of Leo. Son, brother and husband, Leo had been killed exactly one year earlier while on assignment as a journalist in Iraq at the too young age of 32.

As Leo’s parents, Marilyn and David, prepare for the arrival of their three daughters and daughter-in-law, the grief of losing their only son and baby is so overwhelming, it threatens to destroy their 40-year marriage. Leo’s three older sisters, Clarissa, Lily and Noelle, have their own private demons to contend with – not to mention their gripes with each other – and his young widow, Thisbe, is hiding a very potent secret. What sets this novel apart is the way it so deftly plumbs each character’s internal landscape while managing to tell a compelling story.

“The World Without You” is Henkin’s third novel, arriving a few years after “Matrimony,” which took Henkin a decade to write, and his debut novel, “Swimming Across the Hudson,” which he wrote while a graduate student at the University of Michigan back in the late 1990s.

“When I wrote ‘Swimming Across the Hudson,’ I was in my early 30s and was single. I’m now in my late 40s and am married with kids,” said Henkin, in a phone interview from his home in New York where he directs the MFA program in fiction writing at Brooklyn College.

Looking back, Henkin sees his first novel as coming from a “[short] story writer sensibility” – his short stories have been cited for distinction in Best American Short Stories and broadcast on NPR’s “Selected Shorts” – while his second novel was much “bigger and broader. It takes place over 20 years.” In contrast, “The World Without You” takes place over three days and is told through eight points of view. “I was interested in doing something different in terms of time and vantage point,” he said.

The seed for “The World Without You” was a cousin who died of cancer when he was only in his 20s, leaving behind a young widow. Henkin’s aunt never forgave her former daughter-in-law for remarrying – or accepted her son’s death.

Beyond the tension between his aunt and her daughter-in-law, Henkin was “always struck by the ways family grieve, the differences in the way that a parent grieves for a child and the way a spouse grieves for a spouse. A parent does not move on and a spouse moves on,” he said.

That gap was the initial basis for the tension between Leo’s mother, Marilyn, and his widow, Thisbe. While the novel was inspired by actual events, Henkin says his books have gotten less autobiographical as time goes on. “Novelists write about characters and they tell stories. Ideas come in through back door,” he said, “but for me, fiction is about fiction. I read [and write] fiction to get out of my own experience.”

‘Novelists write about characters and they tell stories. Ideas come in through back door’

Like the Frankel children, Henkin grew up in a New York Jewish household near Columbia University where his father, the late Louis Henkin, was a longtime and much acclaimed professor of law. It was, he says, an “idiosyncratic” Jewish household. His father grew up in a very Orthodox, Yiddish speaking home while his mother, Alice Hartman Henkin, also an established lawyer, grew up in a secular Jewish home. They raised their children to straddle both worlds – what Henkin said his father called a “Mendelssohn Jew” in reference to philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. “My father always said, ‘A Jew in synagogue and a human being on the street,’” said Henkin.

Other than living in New York, the Frankel’s world is uniquely their own. Over-achiever Clarissa, the eldest — who who is married to another high achiever, a successful young professor at Columbia – is struggling at age 39 with infertility. The middle daughter, Lily, a feisty lawyer, is in a committed and long time relationship with her non-Jewish boyfriend whom she doesn’t want to marry – or include in the family memorial weekend for Leo. Finally, Noelle, the third and most compelling, if not always the most likeable, sister, was the black sheep of the family who after distinguishing herself in her teen years through promiscuity, has moved to Israel where she found Judaism.

Noelle, her baal teshuva husband, and four sons have come in from Jerusalem; they are the only family members not living in America, and their religiosity upsets the balance. (Those who have experienced this first hand will identify with the scene in the novel where Marilyn and David buy all new dishes so that Noelle and her family will eat in their home, only to find out that neither the dishes nor anything else, is kosher enough.)

Henkin is a polished writer with an eye for detail, but where he really shines is in how he tenderly reveals each character’s complex personality, layer by layer

Henkin is a polished writer with an eye for detail (“Her eyes are the green of a freshly sliced cucumber”), but where he really shines is in how he tenderly reveals each character’s complex personality, layer by layer. Take Noelle, who is at odds with everyone – her combative and insecure husband, her sisters who make her feel inadequate – and her four boys, who, however well behaved, are still children and often hard to manage. When things really spiral out of hand, Henkin writes as if mining Noelle’s inner-critic, “She can’t control her husband and she can’t control her children, and what good is she if she can’t do that?”

When it comes to remembering Leo, an almost too good to be true character who was charming, fun-loving, mischievous, handsome and seemingly talented in absolutely everything, each of his loved ones grieves for him differently. Marilyn has chosen to foist all of her venom and anguish on the Bush administration and has published 24 anti-war opinion pieces over the past year, which comes out to nearly one every two weeks.

But for his widow, Thisbe, who is raising their 3-year-old son alone in California, remembering and mourning Leo is complicated. She was frustrated that he left them to go to Iraq and equally frustrated that having moved far away from his family, she is also moving on with her life. Which doesn’t mean she has forgotten.

As Henkin writes, “To the question, ‘how are you?’… the answer is long and it’s different from moment to moment.” Everyone thinks about the milestones, Leo’s birthday, their anniversary, but it’s the “everyday things that are the toughest.” Like when she automatically drops Great Grains Raisins, Dates and Pecans in her shopping cart, Leo’s favorite. Thisbe’s allergic to nuts. After coming home and unloading her packages and seeing the cereal, Thisbe finds herself “standing in the kitchen and she [starts] to cry.” In moments like these, Henkin captures what grief means, day after day.

So it is with “The World Without You.” It’s a slice of life of a very real family grappling with something bigger than them. It’s also a moving story and a good read, and, from start to finish, deeply honest.

“The World Without You,” by Joshua Henkin (Pantheon; $25.95)