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Morningside Heights
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur, Shane Baker
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
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Morningside Heights
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Publisher's Summary
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Book • When Ohio-born Pru Steiner arrives in New York in 1976, she follows in a long tradition of young people determined to take the city by storm. But when she falls in love with and marries Spence Robin, her hotshot young Shakespeare professor, her life takes a turn she couldn’t have anticipated.
Thirty years later, something is wrong with Spence. The Great Man can’t concentrate; he falls asleep reading The New York Review of Books. With their daughter, Sarah, away at medical school, Pru must struggle on her own to care for him. One day, feeling especially isolated, Pru meets a man, and the possibility of new romance blooms. Meanwhile, Spence’s estranged son from his first marriage has come back into their lives. Arlo, a wealthy entrepreneur who invests in biotech, may be his father’s last, best hope.
Morningside Heights is a sweeping and compassionate novel about a marriage surviving hardship. It’s about the love between women and men, and children and parents; about the things we give up in the face of adversity; and about how to survive when life turns out differently from what we thought we signed up for.
What the critics say
New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Book
Best Fiction of the Year - Chicago Tribune
One of Newsweek's Most Highly Anticipated New Books
38 Novels You Need to Read this Summer - Lit Hub
One of Good Morning America's 27 Books for June
The Millions Most Anticipated
Best Book of the Year - Bookmarks Magazine
Top Jewish Pop Cultural Stories - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
One of Alma’s Favorite Books for Summer
“Henkin has explored the exigencies of marriage and families (especially recombined families) through unflinching yet kind depictions of the ways we live now.... His thoughtful new novel, Morningside Heights, proves no exception.... Notably and satisfyingly, much of Morningside takes place against a New York City that is clearly beloved to its author. Henkin tours a wealth of landmarks and neighborhoods with authority and affection.... Quietly told, the story nonetheless pulses with insistence: Attention must be paid. This subtle urgency opens our own awareness, lens-like, upon the implied human task, larger than any single calamity - that of attending to relentless change, loss, finitude.” (Joan Frank, The Washington Post)
“[Morningside Heights] is generous, wise, and wry enough to avoid sentimentality.... Astonishingly, Henkin transforms what could be a mighty grim work of fiction into a melancholy and tender one enriched by the viewpoints of a constellation of characters.” (Elizabeth Taylor, The National Book Review)
“[Henkin's] story of a brilliant Shakespearean and his wife - once his student - radiates a tenderness for the city that we, his intended readers, can best appreciate - perhaps now most of all, as we ask our city to return to us.... Henkin is a fine writer with a wry fondness for his characters, but like any New Yorker he knows how to keep a safe distance. The specific letting-go that all New Yorkers must master if we don’t wish to be crippled by nostalgia - especially now, if we do hope to see our city’s resurgence - is particularly nuanced when a city neighborhood is also a college town, but Henkin more than meets this challenge.” (Jean Hanff Korelitz, The New York Times Book Review)