A Writing Marriage

In this awkward blend of biography and self-portrait, A Stitch in the Air novelist Carlson-Hijuelos reflects on the life of her late husband, Pulitzer winner Oscar Hijuelos (1951–2013), their marriage, and how an unfinished novel discovered among Hijuelos’s papers “would be among his crowning achievements” if he had completed it. The unpublished Blue Antiquity centers on Victor Mercado, an academic whose “cultural upbringing, hobbies, avocations, passions, and beliefs,” Carlson-Hijuelos writes, “are virtually the same” as her husband’s. Unfortunately, excerpts from the manuscript, which Carlson-Hijuelos includes “to harmonize with and expand upon select recollections of our relationship,” are the strongest passages in the book. By contrast, her attempts to recount Hijuelos’s life—particularly a lengthy childhood hospitalization that permanently impacted his ability to speak Spanish—can feel patronizing, with the author suggesting that her husband simply lacked “the confidence to assert himself in his family’s native tongue.” Trips to Europe and Japan, working vacations at the couple’s waterside Connecticut home, and their joint hire at Duke University offer sweet glimpses into their relationship, but syrupy prose (“Ah, his childlike essence, so evident in his habit of arranging tableaus of his beloved lead figurines”) mars the proceedings. Despite its good intentions, this disappoints. Agent: Jennifer Lyons, Jennifer Lyons Agency. (May)