If I Forget You
A Novel
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4.4 • 25 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Thomas Christopher Greene's If I Forget You is the most moving and beautifully-written love story I've read since Cold Mountain."—Howard Frank Mosher, author of God's Kingdom
Two former lovers reconnect in this beautiful and haunting tale of great lost love from the critically acclaimed author of The Headmaster's Wife
Deeply affecting and compulsively readable, The Headmaster's Wife was a breakout book for Thomas Christopher Greene. Now, Greene returns with a beautifully written, emotional new novel perfect for his growing audience.
Twenty-one years after they were driven apart by circumstances beyond their control, two former lovers have a chance encounter on a Manhattan street. What follows is a tense, suspenseful exploration of the many facets of enduring love. Told from altering points of view through time, If I Forget You tells the story of Henry Gold, a poet whose rise from poverty embodies the American dream, and Margot Fuller, the daughter of a prominent, wealthy family, and their unlikely, star-crossed love affair, complete with the secrets they carry when they find each other for the second time.
Written in lyrical prose, If I Forget You is at once a great love story, a novel of marriage, manners, and family, a meditation on the nature of art, a moving elegy to what it means to love and to lose, and how the choices we make can change our lives forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Greene (The Headmaster's Wife) begins this dramatic novel in 2012 with two former lovers, prize-winning poet Henry Gold and Connecticut housewife Margot Baldwin, catching sight of each other on a Manhattan street. Both are instantly thrown back in time to the campus of Bannister College in 1991, where the two first met. Despite being from two different worlds he was Jewish and poor, she was WASPy and wealthy they fell in love. Then a tragic circumstance forced the two of them apart, and they haven't seen or been in contact with one another since. When they finally reconnect, all those old emotions come rushing back. Will Henry, settled into his comfortable divorced-dad life in Manhattan, and Margot, trapped in a loveless marriage in which she has two children, rekindle the love they lost 21 years ago, or will old secrets and hurts stand in the way of their future happiness? Greene applies a rigorous intelligence to a familiar premise. Piled-on melodramatic elements (an overbearing father, an act of violence) and a pat ending threaten to undermine the care with which he has created two believable and empathetic characters. Nevertheless, readers will be rooting to see Henry and Margot together again despite the odds.
