Morningside Heights: A Novel Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Joshua Henkin (Author), Kathe Mazur (Narrator), Shane Baker (Narrator),

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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.

Listening Length

8 hours and 57 minutes
Author

Joshua Henkin
Narrator

Kathe Mazur, see all
Audible release date

June 15 2021
Language

English
Publisher

Random House Audio
ASIN

B081K7XXMQ
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	8 hours and 57 minutes
Author	Joshua Henkin
Narrator	Kathe Mazur, Shane Baker
Audible.ca Release Date	June 15 2021
Publisher	Random House Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B081K7XXMQ
Best Sellers Rank	#140,109 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #1,518 in Jewish Literature (Books) #2,261 in World Literature (Audible Books & Originals) #16,337 in Family Life (Books)

Customer reviews

5 star		42%
4 star		31%
3 star		19%
2 star		5%
1 star		4%

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Top review from Canada

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Jo Jo

A family story

Reviewed in Canada on March 14, 2022

Born and raised in the Columbus, Ohio suburb of Bexley, in 1976 Pru Steiner moves to Manhattan to attend university. She meets Spence Robin, a young English professor at Columbia University, and after their marriage the couple settle down to university life while raising their daughter Sarah. The appearance of Arlo, Spence’s son from his first marriage, complicates their lives but they carry on.

Spence becomes a renowned Shakespearean scholar, but thirty years later he is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. This diagnosis changes all of their lives as they adjust to this new reality.

"Morningside Heights" is an interesting portrait of life and marriage.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

YamBee

Beautifully written

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 30, 2021

Verified Purchase

A poignant story beautifully written. The detail on how the professor hid his illness was very insightful, as well as the family's slow realisation of what had happened.

Lauren

An Emotional Journey That Speaks To Everyone...

Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2021

Verified Purchase

Morningside Heights is Henkin's greatest work to date. His vivid scenes, impassioned storytelling and vulnerable characters fasten you to the family's authentic and emotional ride through life's familiar struggles. It is powerful, enriching and tugs at your heart. Once you start, you won't be able to put it down.

11 people found this helpful

Roger DeBlanck

A Family Saga

Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2021

Verified Purchase

Morningside Heights is a family saga that is extremely fast-paced and compulsively readable because Henkin’s sparse, fluid prose makes the drama feel almost like a page-turning thriller. However, with the type of character study Henkin sets out to deliver, I never felt entirely close to the people whose lives became burdened with an adversity that would test any family.

Spence Robin is the youngest and among the most talented and auspicious English professors at Columbia in the 1970s. When he falls in love with his student Pru Steiner, an Ohioan seeking to make her mark as an actress in New York City, their tender romance leads to a long, loyal marriage, with every up and down a lifetime together encompasses, until Spence begins to show signs of mental deterioration. How will their burdens play out?

That is the noteworthy summary of Henkin’s novel because so much of the narrative is presented in snippets, much of which is interesting and kept me wanting to know more, yet Henkin seldom explored the opportunities. We’re barely introduced to someone important like Sarah, the daughter of Spence and Pru, or we’re often merely told something momentous has happened, such as Sarah has gone off to medical school, and then the novel just keeps racing forward without elaborating anything more. The chapters, indeed, fly by with covering over forty years, and yet the scant details of the scenes often feel more like outlines with chunks of dialogue spruced up around a few lovely descriptive sentences.

Some events come off so incredibly condensed and underdeveloped that in a single paragraph Henkin takes the pivotal character Arlo, Spence’s son from a first marriage, from graduating high school to working at Wendy’s to finding his calling with computer technology to opening his own IT business to working at Yahoo to moving to Asia to becoming wealthy. Much of what transpires in this novel is only mentioned. Too many dots are connected to propel the narrative forward to the next drama. Stick figures and box houses, instead of indelible people, places, and passages.

Nonetheless, even with the novel’s shortcomings, I still remained addicted to what would happen next, and the most engaging sections of the novel focused on Spence’s illness. Many of these touching and devastating scenes towards the end of the story are much more developed and, therefore, produce more emotion. In the end, however, Morningside Heights feels mostly like a decent sitcom book that you can binge-read, even as you can predict the end and know once you’re done that nothing overly lasting will remain.

The endorsements of the incomparable Richard Russo and Julie Orringer drew me to Henkin’s novel, and despite any criticisms, I still appreciated the compassion and realism of the story. But I yearned for the beauty of the writing to be more. Morningside Heights would have delivered a more memorable family saga had it been more embellished with depth of character and richness of setting like Russo’s brilliantly funny and tragic contemporary tales Straight Man and Empire Falls or like Orringer’s unforgettable historical epics The Invisible Bridge and The Flight Portfolio.

2 people found this helpful

R. Friedman

a beautifully written family drama

Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2021

Verified Purchase

This is a beautifully done book. In elegant and understated prose, Henkin unfolds the story of a family confronting the ravaging effects of early onset Altzheimer's on their husband and father, a former superstar professor at Columbia. The novel, though, is not just the story of his disease or of his decline, but of the complex ways in which all of the familial relationships were configured around him and how they must now be rethought as he disappears further and further from view (Kelly Blair is to be commended for a book jacket which perfectly captures the centrality of his presence/absence to the novel). Henkin's powers of observation are astute and his characters are fully and sympathetically drawn. What emerges is a rich and compelling portrait of a family rearranging itself in the wake of immeasurable grief and loss. This is an utterly compelling read- I highly recommend!

5 people found this helpful

RMG

Poignant and painful, yet manages to be hopeful as well

Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2022

Verified Purchase

I found this book both heartbreaking and hopeful. It is a family story, and we get to know the husband and wife well, and the adult children are still evolving. The novel is set in NYC, mostly in the vicinity of Columbia University. The author excels at giving us snapshot images of people on the streets of Manhattan -- in a way so subtle, and yet so evocative. The story itself follows the deterioration of the husband, a renowned Shakespeare professor, as he succumbs to early onset Alzheimer's. Although I have not had to care for a relative with that disease, the depiction felt very true and deeply sad. But, as is always the case, the living must go on, and these characters do -- in poignant and insightful ways. There is also Jewish material that runs through the book, which is presented respectfully, although I admit to wishing the family had made more of its heritage instead of mostly throwing it away except for some nostalgic moments. A fine book.

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Morningside Heights: A Novel Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

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Top review from Canada

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Top reviews from other countries

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