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Matrimony (Vintage Contemporaries)by Joshua Henkin
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments: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. Review:"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." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"Writers are incorrigible autobiographers. That's why there are so many novels about writers. Today, those novels are likely to read like CVs, cataloging stints at conferences and writing colonies, adjunct teaching gigs, the requisite M.F.A. degree and years of despairing work on a project that doesn't meet the writer's standards. Such is the average writerly life. Yet there is a... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) Review:"In this heartfelt homage to the risks and rewards of marriage, Henkin never artificially amps up his material, instead allowing the quiet accumulation of his characters' shared experiences to create for his readers a world they will recognize and relate to." Booklist Review:"In the tradition of John Cheever and Richard Yates, Joshua Henkin has written a devastating novel about love, hope, delusion, and the intricate ways in which time's passage raises us up even as it grinds us down. It's a beautiful book. Here's to its brilliant future." Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours Review:"In this classically composed second novel of a couple who meet and fall in love at their liberal arts college in the Berkshires, Henkin...sensitively examines the 15 years of love and marriage that follow." The Philadelphia Inquirer Review:"[A]n appealing story of romance, wedlock, personal and spousal conflict and growth....Ragged, but it gets to you and stays with you. Expect even better things from Henkin in the future." Kirkus Reviews Review:"While not earthshakingly original, this novel takes a good look at love, friendship, and marriage from the Reagan years to the new century. Recommended." Library Journal Review:"With vibrant intelligence, Matrimony looks at the mystery of how a couple stays together and the ways even the most privileged among us are subject to the disasters wrought by our incalculable natures. A luminous tale, eloquently told." Joan Silber, author of Lucky Us Review:"[Henkin] is able to explore in depth a surprisingly wide array of issues universal to the experiences of marriage. . . . It is a testament to Matrimony's redemptive power that at the end of the novel, despite all of the difficulties the characters face, the reader might still want to get, or stay, married." Adam Goldwyn, Small Spiral Notebook Review:"Mr. Henkin writes with a winningly anachronistic absence of showiness....
This is just a lifelike, likable book populated by three-dimensional
characters who make themselves very much at home on the page." Janet Maslin, New York Times Review:"[A] charming novel ... Henkin keeps you reading with original characters,
witty dialogue and a view that marriage, for all its flaws, is worth the
trouble." Tom Fields-Meyer, People Review:"Henkin is a master of scenemaking, and each scene reveals enough of his story that we must go on to the next scene, to see what consequence it has." The Chicago Tribune Synopsis:In its emotional honesty, its luminous prose, and wry wit, Matrimony is a beautifully detailed portrait of what it means to share a life with someone — to do so when young, and to try to do it afresh on the brink of middle age.
VideoAbout the AuthorJoshua Henkin is the author of the novel Swimming Across the Hudson (1997), which was named a Los Angeles Times Notable Book of the Year. His short stories have been published in Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, Triquarterly, DoubleTake, Glimmer Train, The North American Review, and elsewhere. His fiction has been performed at Symphony Space and broadcast on NPR's "Selected Shorts" as well as cited for distinction in Best American Short Stories. He is the recipient of the Playboy Fiction Prize, the James Fellowship for the Novel, the Hopwood Award, the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, and a grant from the Michigan Council of the Arts. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Nation, Mother Jones, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches in the creative writing programs at Sarah Lawrence College and Brooklyn College. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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