“Pru hated that emergency alert, the sight of Spence with a chain around his neck, like a criminal, or a cow.” Suicidal ideation clouds moments of lucidity. For a while people cover for him: colleagues, teaching assistants, even his wife.īecause for someone like Spence “to be robbed of his mind” presents an irony almost too great to bear. Two children: Sarah is in medical school his estranged son Arlo, from a fleeting previous marriage, is turning out to be the next Steve Jobs. The Columbia professor has two Guggenheims and a MacArthur, for heck’s sake! A devoted wife. “He was tugging at his bowtie, like a horse struggling with his bit.” As Spence ransacks his jacket for the invitation, “his pockets hung at his sides, like donkey ears.”Īt 57, Spence is too young, too anointed to accept this sentence. The realization accompanies a palpable discomfort. He confuses a party’s call for costume attire as cocktail attire, an innocent mistake, if only it were an isolated one. Pru Steiner is barely 50 when her husband, renown Shakespeare scholar Spence Robin, begins to exhibit symptoms. A propulsive, literary page-turner about a family beset by early onset Alzheimer’s? If that sounds like an oxymoron then you have not encountered the heart, scalpel, and unassuming genius of Joshua Henkin whose new novel, Morningside Heights is not only a study in craft, but a testament to the resiliency of the human spirit.
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