Matrimony: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) [Paperback]

Joshua Henkin (Author)

Book Description

Series: Vintage Contemporaries | Publication Date: August 26, 2008

It's the fall of 1986, and Julian Wainwright, an aspiring writer, arrives at Graymont College in New England. Here he meets Carter Heinz, with whom he develops a strong but ambivalent friendship, and beautiful Mia Mendelsohn, with whom he falls in love. Spurred on by a family tragedy, Julian and Mia's love affair will carry them to graduation and beyond, taking them through several college towns, over the next fifteen years. Starting at the height of the Reagan era and ending in the new millennium, Matrimony is a stunning novel of love and friendship, money and ambition, desire and tensions of faith. It is a richly detailed portrait of what it means to share a life with someone-to do it when you're young, and to try to do it afresh on the brink of middle age.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1987, Manhattan-reared hothouse flower Julian Wainwright matriculates at the alternative Graymont College for the express purposes of attending Professor Stephen Chesterfield's exclusive fiction writing workshop. As Chesterfield dryly infuses his writing wisdom, Julian befriends the cocky, aloof, lesser-born Carter Heinz when they are the only two to whom Chesterfield gives the nod. Carter soon meets Pilar in the cafeteria; Julian meets Mia in the laundry room. Carter's simmering class resentment of Julian surfaces. Senior year finds the two couples living next door to one another and plotting their futures. Henkin (Swimming Across the Hudson) subsequently follows the lovers for the next 15 years through countless college towns, family dramas, failed literary projects and the dot-com boom. Many scenes are too long, and never get below the surface of the cast, particularly wannabe-litterateur Julian. But for a book called Matrimony, Henkin offers surprisingly little about Julian and Mia's marriage, so when big confrontations do arrive, they quickly slide into melodrama. By then, lines like But I don't want to get my M.F.A. Can't you understand that? I've already been in enough writing workshops will have cleared the classroom. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The New Yorker

Toward the end of Henkin’s second novel, Julian, who has just arrived at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, finds that the other students do not like his work. "The story was quiet; all his work was," Henkin writes. "He had nothing against muscular prose; it was the flexing of those muscles that he objected to, and, along with it, a disregard for character." The passage encapsulates Henkin’s telling of the story of two couples who meet in college and quickly fall into domestic arrangements that they keep for years to come. On their path to middle age, momentous events occur, but Henkin gives equal space to the unmomentous, and everything is related in the same measured tone. Although the mundane sections tend to fall flat, when Henkin handles material with more inherent drama, like the sickness and death of one character’s mother, his quiet approach pays off.
Copyright © 2007 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (August 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030727716X
• ISBN-13: 978-0307277169
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (69 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #976,053 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent read, September 24, 2007

By 

Elizabeth (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Matrimony: A Novel (Hardcover)

Matrimony is a moving portrait of a marriage that is tested through the years by jealousy, loss, and betrayal. The story follows Mia and Julian, who meet in college and tie the knot soon after graduation. As they make their way from New England college town to Midwestern college town and finally to New York, they discover that long-dormant secrets and old rivalries can tear into the fabric that holds a marriage together.

Henkin's straightforward, reserved prose strikes just the right tone, so that the story is touching, but never maudlin. He has a witty take on the singular world of writing workshops and the writer's struggle to create. Henkin also deftly tackles issues of class and family history, how those things can shape our lives and sometimes haunt us. A deeply felt story and an excellent read.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I wanted to like this more than I did, November 15, 2007

By 

A. Brown - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Matrimony: A Novel (Hardcover)

Matrimony is well written but the characters don't ring true. I almost gave up after a few chapters because the college kids' conversations seemed more suited to thirty-year-olds. Would 19 year olds Julian and Carter REALLY have been that inspired by John Cheever's work in 1987? Wouldn't more likely influences have been Raymond Carver, John Irving, Jay McInerney, or Brett Easton Ellis? I thought when the characters did get older in this book I would be more interested but it's just a mostly dreary account of the ups and downs of an ordinary marriage. The reason the two separate after many years of marriage seems implausible...you split up with a girlfriend or boyfriend over something like that, not your wife of six years or whatever it was. John Irving wrote a classic, much more memorable treatment of a would-be novelist and his academic wife in The World According to Garp almost thirty years ago, which I would recommend over this.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Book, September 3, 2007

By 

Sam75 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Matrimony: A Novel (Hardcover)

Matrimony is the first novel I've read in quite a while, and it reminded me of why I can't subsist on a nonfiction-only diet. Like all great novelists, Joshua Henkin casts a spell that doesn't wear off until long after you've finished the book. There are no gimmicks here, no attempts to dazzle and distract with flashy prose. Instead, you'll find the beautifully crafted and heartbreakingly realistic story of a young writer, Julian Wainwright, trying to negotiate art and life. In telling Wainwright's story, from college into middle age, Henkin also tells much larger stories about love and betrayal and about how our class backgrounds often define us in spite of ourselves. For anyone interested in writing, this novel also comes with a nice bonus. Henkin is a creative writing professor and in his account of the ups and downs of Wainwright's literary journey, he's slipped in a good deal of wisdom on how to write well.