I DON'T KNOW HOW TO TELL YOU THIS

A close-knit family struggles with griefs old and new as one of their number succumbs to memory loss.

“I don’t know how to tell you this, the doctor is saying…” “I don’t know how to tell you this, Elisabeth began…” The title of Thurm’s novel comes up twice in the narrative; twice Rachel receives news so devastating that “in a microsecond” it capsizes her life. Just a few years ago, things were really pretty good. Her husband, Jonathan, was a beloved professor at Yale; her son, Matthew, married the right woman on his third try, a young widow, and is raising two adorable children; then, as now, Rachel tried to help her fellow New Yorkers straighten out their lives as a judge in family court. She is very close to Jonathan’s mother, Szófia, a Holocaust survivor. And despite the fact that the first life-changing news she receives is of her husband’s infidelity, the couple has moved on sufficiently to celebrate their 45th anniversary with a trip to Paris—which is right about when the signs of Jonathan’s condition emerge. He suddenly announces at a restaurant that she should get out her credit card, as he will no longer be paying for her dinners: “The Jonathan Sugarman Bank of America is closed.” When they get home, they find his house keys in the microwave. The novel follows the arc of his decline, and attends to other sorrows as well, from Szófia’s terrible backstory to Matthew’s guilty obsession with his wife’s dead first husband. Precocious, hyperarticulate Luna, who lost her biological dad when she was just 2, is a bright spot for the characters and the readers. “Wait, wasn’t that one of those iconic moments for you, the first time you saw me walking?” says this 10-year-old when her elders claim they cannot recall her first steps. There is also occasional comic relief in Rachel’s courtroom, where Thurm’s signature black humor and spot-on thumbnail portraits leaven the appalling difficulties her petitioners face.

Actually, Thurm does know how to deliver her very sad news: with heartbreaking clarity and profound compassion.