The World Without You by Joshua Henkin is a novel about a big family coping with the death of a son and brother, one year after the tragedy. The novel is mostly dialogue (excellent dialogue). It contains many miniscule details (for example, washing the dishes details) that are at once amazing and irritating, but always impressive.

I like details, but they can wear on some readers (or so my ex-agent once told me, when she explained why I'd written "an award winning novel" that she wasn't even going to try to sell. This novel still lives on a thumb drive).

The details and the dialogue and the lack of serious action in The World Without You make this book clearly "literary." Enjoy the novel for its characters and the poignancy of their respective dilemmas. The novel is at once timeless and a wonderful reflection of a certain point in time (the inexplicable re-election of George W. Bush; the senseless deaths of innocents caused by the Iraq war).

From the standpoint of a fiction writer, one MUST read Henkin's newest novel for its amazing characterization and dialogue. It's like Anne Tyler, but amplified. (Anne Tyler never disappoints.) If you're trying to teach writing students what is meant by "round" characters, THIS is what is meant.

I did not love all the characters in the novel, but that's okay, because I was still interested in them, and I still wanted to try to understand them. I could not always picture the characters, but that is okay, because I can use my imagination.

What I did not have to imagine, what I could really feel, was the way each character was lost in past memories while dealing with the current demands of life. The omniscient POV here was very impressive.

I am an only child, but I could understand the complex dynamics of a family holed up together in a country house. There was an intentional stagnant quality to their being almost trapped together in this house...this is a book that is well worth reading. My only criticism is that male writers seem to toss in gratuituous-seeming sex.