MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS

A superstar literature professor is struck down in his prime in the cruelest possible way.

“So you’re sleeping with your professor,” Camille said. “Weren’t you the one lecturing about the casting couch?” OK, it’s a #MeToo novel, you’re thinking, set at Columbia in the 1970s, about a relationship between a 22-year-old Ph.D. student named Prudence Steiner and her only-six-years-older Shakespeare professor, Spence Robin, a dashing, auburn-haired campus idol who rides her around the Upper West Side on his moped. But Henkin’s fourth novel turns out to be a different sort of story entirely—tragedy rather than outrage. Pru drops out, gets married, gets pregnant while Spence gets two Guggenheims, a Mellon, and a MacArthur. But talent and good luck are ultimately no match for early-onset Alzheimer’s. Pru is 51 and Spence 57 and their only child, Sarah, has just left for medical school when discomfiting things begin to happen. Spence is cold all the time, misreads a party invitation, and, most critically, can’t seem to make any headway on his book project, a new, annotated Shakespeare—though it would provide income they desperately need to support his disabled sister and his son, Arlo, from his brief first marriage. Henkin specializes in melancholy stories about complicated families, and this one is a real heartbreaker. His portrait of Pru is nuanced and sensitive, following her into one of the darkest places a spouse can go and hitting the notes just right. The other point-of-view character is Arlo, a dyslexic genius raised haphazardly by his bohemian mom and his underinvolved dad—his trajectory is interesting but distant from the emotional core of the story. Some of the most powerful moments in the book are sudden insights into Spence’s experience—more of these would have been welcome.

Caring for a spouse with Alzheimers is an ever more common heartbreak, illuminated by this tender portrait of a marriage.