I am taking liberties by thinking of Joshua Henkin as a friend. The good JH sent me a copy of his novel, Matrimony, after reading a couple of my Tobias Wolff reviews. He figured from reading my reviews that I would like his book. He was so genial about it that I just had to like him. Thanks, JH.
I have a friend who once told me that friendship was like a marriage. Well…I don’t think that’s true…only a marriage is like a marriage. But matrimony is the paradigm for being involved surely, and in that sense writing, and marriage and friendship, all pull together in Matrimony.
Julian, from a wealthy family in NYC, meets his best friend, Carter, who is from the wrong side of the tracks on the wrong coast, at their ivy-infested college in New England. Carter has gotten in on a scholarship.
Carter can’t get over what life has not given him, no matter how much success he has. Julian is driven by the idea of doing it his way since his parents gave him everything. He breaks out of his cage with his marriage to Mia and his commitment to a writing career. His marriage and a novel is the territory that Julian is determined to own.
JH’s is an art of getting all the details right and his voice is amazing while he does it: wistful at times, flippant or matter-of-fact at others…a third person authorial voice, detached but compassionate. Henkin can describe two friends playing basketball…or a couple having some other couples over for dinner…and make these quotidian events seem like the most important occurrences in the world…and they are. What you are doing…right now…is all you have.
Marriage shelters Julian and Mia. It seems like their personal limitations are annulled when they are together in a union and that they both falter when they are separated. As for that weaker relationship, friendship, in this case Julian’s for his best friend Carter, you can hear it crack apart under the strain of egos that just can’t stop trying to beat down the past.
You end up rooting for Julian, Mia and Carter. You want this marriage and this friendship not to fail. These are characters….people…that you can care about. Joshua Henkin is a modest writer but a large talent. In Matrimony, he has written a novel that puts his characters, and not himself, first. It’s quite a pleasure.
-DH
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