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A Great Book

 A novel I really loved this summer was "Morningside Heights," by Joshua Henkin.


Alzheimer's disease occupies so much space in the world of storytelling: "Still Alice," "What They Had," "The Father," "Iris," "The Iron Lady," "Away from Her," "The Bear Came over the Mountain," "We Are Not Ourselves," "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," the Uncle Junior portions of "The Sopranos." "The Savages." Amy Bloom's upcoming memoir, "In Love."

But I think the subject is inexhaustible. It's interesting to see how people behave in extremis. How could we ever reach "an end" in looking at, and thinking about, this behavior?

"Morningside Heights" features a woman, Pru, who marries a Shakespeare star. The star is sort of like a young Harold Bloom, climbing the rungs within an Ivy League institution--but, early on, his mind starts to give up. Pru--who has sacrificed her own academic career to tend to her supernova--must confront the fact that she is just starting her middle-age stretch, and she is already on a speedy trip to widowhood.

How Pru copes is the main focus of "Morningside Heights."

I think that the author, Henkin, lost a parent to Alzheimer's, and I think he is drawing on personal experience here. (Who knows?) The scenes seem so real. Pru must hire a live-in nurse, and she meets a woman, Ginny, who could be a great candidate. "But are you strong?" Pru asks. "Physically strong?" And Ginny says: "I did shot-put thirty years ago." Ginny then picks up a human adult, holds the adult under one arm, and spins around the kitchen.

When Pru fears she may lose Ginny to a higher bidder, Pru says, "I can't raise your rate, but I can give you all the things I don't want. Tickets to the Met. Blenders. Coats." Later, Ginny refuses to have Pru in her own house--because her house has become a storage site for all the fancy goods Pru has abandoned, in guilt.

In another scene, Pru turns her phone off to conduct an extramarital affair; it's unclear who would judge Pru at this point, but of course Pru judges herself. While the phone is off, Pru's husband wanders out onto Central Park West, without pants, and Ginny can't figure out what has happened. Moments later, Ginny's hemophiliac son gets a bad scrape on his skin. The amount of suspense--in this slim domestic drama--makes Stephen King's newest novel seem like a snooze.

Well, I continue to think about Pru. I hope that Henkin writes a fifth novel--and finishes soon.
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