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Adult Books - Fiction - General Fiction
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Matrimony.
Henkin, Joshua (author).
Oct. 2007. Pantheon, hardcover, $23.95 (0-375-42435-0).
REVIEW.
First published August, 2007 (Booklist).
Henkin (Swimming across the Hudson, 1997) is the most unassuming of storytellers, his scenes consistently low-key and his prose refreshingly unadorned. Yet, slowly and steadily, he builds a deeply affecting portrait of a marriage, tracking its evolution over 20 years. Julian Wainwright, the wealthy son of longtime New Yorkers and an aspiring novelist, meets Mia Mendelsohn, the daughter of a Canadian physicist, in the laundry room of their bohemian college. Their rapport is immediate; they share the same slightly goofy, whimsical sense of humor and a buoyant optimism. Over the next decades, as they move from one college town to another, Mia becomes a therapist, Julian suffers a massive bout of writer’s block, and they have a falling-out over Julian’s best friend but then reunite and decide to have a child. Henkin emphasizes the passage of time and how it both brings the two new challenges and deepens their bond. 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.— Joanne Wilkinson
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