The secondary status she assumes as faculty wife to a scholar who seems to matter more than she does is echoed by her job at Barnard, where she unhappily flatters donors for the sake of a cause she deems greater than herself. It is after marrying Spence that Pru had decided not to pursue academia she feared competing with her illustrious husband (he actually warned her to stay away from his turf). Still, though diapered and often incoherent, Spence continues to be the sun around which a fascinating constellation of characters revolve, and in whose light and warmth they thrive - or don’t. Once the smooth, swinging star of his academic department (lover of not only Pru, but also another former student, Linda, with whom he has a son), while still in his fifties Spence is sinking into the evening of his life and the depths of mortal humiliation as he loses his mind to early-onset Alzheimer’s. But the title Morningside Heights may also serve as a bittersweet hint about the slow deterioration that Spence endures over the brief course of his life. Many pivotal scenes take place in beloved local haunts like the Hungarian Pastry Shop, the West End Bar, and Chock Full O’Nuts. He and his wife, Pru, met when she was his doctoral student she subsequently dropped her studies and began working in Barnard College’s Office of Development. The title of Joshua Henkin’s new novel, Morningside Heights, refers to the Upper West Side neighborhood in Manhattan crowned by Columbia University, where the book is set and where the main character, Spence Robin, is an esteemed professor of English literature.

Joshua henkin morningside heights