The Book Lady’s Blog

Available in paperback August 26th.

Joshua Henkin’s Matrimony begins in 1986 as New York trust fund baby Julian Wainwright heads to Graymont College in Northington, MA to study fiction writing with the famed Professor Stephen Chesterfield.  On the first day of class, Professor Chesterfield tells Julian and another student named Carter,

“You’re the only two students in the class with even an ounce of talent.  Not that you have much of it…You should get to know each other.”

Julian and Carter spend most of the first semester hanging out and getting to know each other.  Then Carter gets a girlfriend (Pilar) and, as we are wont to do when falling in love, drops out of society for a bit, until Julian meets Mia Mendelsohn, and the rest is history.  The two couples become inseparable.  When the narrative jumps three years to the beginning of their senior year of college, we find both couples still together, living in a co-op, and celebrating their status as “the last ones standing…the only two couples still together from freshman year.”

Henkin makes it clear that life has become more complicated in the three years since we first met Julian and Mia, and Carter and Pilar, and we see them struggling to figure out what comes next after graduation.  Will they stay together?  Will this college relationship translate to the “real world?”  Will Julian and Carter find success as writers?  How does one even go about doing that?  In the midst of all the typical college student turmoil and search for identity, the friends’ relationships are tested by a tragedy in Mia’s family, the aftermath of which will affect all of them for years to come.

They graduate from Graymont, and the narrative again skips ahead, but I won’t reveal any more of the details for those who will read this book in the future…and I hope there are a lot of you because it is certainly a worthwhile read.

Henkin’s descriptions of the early days of Julian and Mia’s relationship are touching and beautifully written.  They resonated with me on a very personal level because I met my husband on our third day of college, and I felt like I was reading our story.    As the characters struggled to plan life after college and worked through their concerns about translating their relationships into the real world and began more seriously exploring the options of marriage and a future, I wrote in the margins, “That’s exactly what it feels like!” That being said, I think I would have enjoyed the book even if I hadn’t shared some of the characters’ experiences.  They just have this wonderful universal appeal.

I love that the characters in this book are real and flawed and easy to relate to.  In the more than fifteen years covered in the book, they make mistakes that jeopardize the futures of their friendships and relationships, and they grapple with those mistakes and their consequences without the convenience of a deus ex machina rescue or a “forgive and forget” moment. Their journeys and development feel real and realistic—-an indication that Henkin really understands people and relationships—-and their observations about life, love, and figuring it all out rang really true for me.

Early in the book, Professor Chesterfield exhorts his students to

Write what you know about what you don’t know, or what you don’t know about what you know.

I had a great time wondering which approach Henkin took when he wrote Matrimony.  Throughout the story, the characters live in several cities, and Henkin’s detailed descriptions of their organization and features (on which corner a particular hot dog joint stands, etc) made me want to dig up a detailed bio and find out if he had lived in all those same places.  There are characters that are writers and psychologists and start-up millionaires, and Henkin seems to know and understand them all quite well.  The sub-stories about Julian and Mia’s families, which couldn’t be more different, are told with a level of insight and understanding that is uncommon in contemporary writing. I saw myself and many of my friends and family members in the pages of Matrimony, and I think Henkin’s ability to do this—-to create characters that are real and imperfect and who have to deal with the challenges of life that we all face—-is simply outstanding.

Ultimately, this is a book about love and friendship and what happens when we test the limits of our commitments.  It is a book about the struggles we all face as we become adults and take on adult responsibilities, and it is about the kinds of mistakes that real people make and the work they must to do recover from them.  It is a reminder about the importance of forgiveness and moving forward.

I thoroughly enjoyed Matrimony, not only because Henkin, in some ways, told my story but because he told a story that I think we can all relate to on some level.  This is a wonderfully written exploration of friendship and commitment, and I’m pleased to give it 4.5 out of 5.

Joshua Henkin has generously offered to give away a signed copy of Matrimony to one of my readers when it comes out in paperback in a few weeks.  Stay tuned for details, coming soon!