Waiting on Wednesday #6: THE WORLD WITHOUT YOU by Joshua Henkin

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Breaking the Spine. You can visit other bloggers’ “Waiting on Wednesday” picks by clicking on the link.

The World Without You by Joshua Henkin. Release date: June 19 2012 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

I’m taking a break from my usual genre today to promote a literary mainstream novel.  This is Henkin’s third book, and I’m sorry to say I’ve never read his work before.  The World Without You got a boxed review in Publisher’s Weekly, which is the best type of review you can get from them. Not only is the cover striking, but the story itself is one of those big, character-driven family sagas, where the action takes place over the course of a weekend. Here’s what Goodreads has to say:

It’s July 4th, 2005, and the Frankel family is descending upon their beloved summer home in the Berkshires. But this is no ordinary holiday: the family is gathering for a memorial. Leo, the youngest of the four Frankel siblings and an intrepid journalist and adventurer, was killed one year ago while on assignment in Iraq. His parents, Marilyn and David, are adrift in grief, and it’s tearing apart their forty-year marriage. Clarissa, the eldest, is struggling at thirty-nine with infertility. Lily, a fiery-tempered lawyer, is angry about everything. Noelle, a born-again Orthodox Jew (and the last person to see Leo alive), has come in from Israel with her husband and four children and feels entirely out-of-place. And Thisbe–Leo’s widow and mother of their three-year-old son–has arrived from California bearing her own secret. Over the course of three days, the Frankels will contend with sibling rivalries and marital feuds, volatile women and silent men, and, ultimately, with the true meaning of family.

This is one book that I will fit into the schedule to read as soon as it comes out! What books are you waiting on?