Matrimony
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3.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
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.
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.
Customer Reviews
Insipid
Even though I was enthralled with the first 1/3 of the novel, I had hoped Julian would've had that affair and juiced up the novel. It had potential and Henkin clearly took a plethora of a topic and failed to elaborate on the topic and quirky habits, especially Mia's character and morph this novel into a great read. I was disappointed at the ending and real life doesn't happen when Mia did what she did. I'm currently reading The Lowland, my first by this author, and she, like Henkin, is in this situation with her characters. Whereas Lahari, genuinely has her characters reflect real life, Henkin, lives in a bubble with his thus giving it less weight than the heavy topic calls for.
Bottom line, go to the library and plan on being disappointed with the middle and end. It lacked drama and had loss ends.