I cannot remember reading a novel whose title announced so definitively what the book was about. Matrimony is about marriage — and not just that of the main characters, Mia Mendelsohn and Julian Wainwright, but by extension, that of the parents of each, and, peripherally, the complicated love relationships of Mia’s sister and Julian’s college buddy. Henkin, himself a college teacher, is comfortable with the framework of the college campus. From the small undergraduate New England campus to graduate school years at the University of Michigan to the Iowa Writing workshops, the marriage is explored through betrayal and loss. From their first meeting in a dormitory laundry room to their town house in New York City, Mia and Julian’s commitment to each other must survive several tests. Julian, a writer, has published several short stories in literary journals, and is at work on a novel through most of the book. As the only child of an affluent WASP New York family, Julian disappoints their expectation that he would follow in his father’s footsteps into the world of high finance. Mia’s father is also disappointed in his offspring’s choices. A physicist, he views psychology, Mia’s career choice, as a “soft” science. In her adolescence, when she briefly identified as Orthodox, her parents were barely tolerant. Her Jewish identity in the twenty years of this story is defined by the mourning ritual of observing the shiva period when her mother dies and her attempts to observe the kaddish and yahrzeit rituals. Julian doesn’t write “muscular” prose and neither does Joshua Henkin. However, his character depictions and the college campus, where the atmosphere of youth, career and political concerns pervade, make Matrimony an engrossing read.
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