Yes, I heard that sigh of relief when you realized this was a book review and not one of my usual rants on the state of matrimony. I finished Matrimony by Joshua Henkin several days ago and have been struggling with writing the review.
Two copies of the book were sent to Karen at verbatim by Amber Santos of Meryl L. Moss Media Relations as an Advance Reader's Edition. Karen was kind enough to send me the extra copy. I can't remember if I read Karen's review yet...but I know I didn't read the link she sent me to the NY Times book review.
The strange thing that happened was that on the day I received the book from Karen, I clicked on Amazon (I swear, I wasn't buying anything...just looking up a previous purchase when I was unenlightened and had not taken up the sword for independent bookstores) and Matrimony came up as one of my recommended books [insert Twilight Zone theme here].
It takes some time to grow accustomed to the "flow" of Matrimony. While it is told, for the most part, chronologically, it jumps by years leaving you wondering what happened in those years, how it shaped the characters and their responses to situations, etc. I'm going to assume this was purposeful...the author didn't just say, OK, I'm bored of this character at 23, I think I'll leap to see what he/she is up to at 30. I think this is what Amy (see best picture ever of her here) and I would call a "slice of life" book. The plot is not the thing so much as the descriptions of the characters and the moments in their lives. It was not a disturbing or distracting style, but it was different and made me read it differently.
The beginning of the book captured me because I have wanted to write about my college years, how it felt going to an expensive private school as the poor scholarship student. Now I don't have to because Joshua Henkin has me in his book...only I'm a man and my name is Carter. The college years follow Julian (the rich kid from New York...yup, knew lots of them) and Carter as they become friends and eventually include Mia and Pilar, their respective girlfriends.
Matrimony challenged me vocabularily (a word I just made up)...and I like that. It's like golfing with my friend Karen...she uses words that I haven't heard before...makes our golf educational even when our game is not going well. I marked words and phrases that I had to look up, such as:
"hoist your own petard" - meaning injured by the device that you intended to use to injure others. A petard being basically an old-world bomb.
jejune - naive, simplistic; (of writings) dry and uninteresting
banal - although I knew it meant lacking in originality, boring...but reading it in dialogue made me curious as to the pronunciation. I'm still not sure I have it down to where I would feel comfortable using it in conversation.
metanymically - substituting the name of an attribute to the thing it stands for (example, suit for businessman)
solipsist - one who believes that the self is all that can be known to exist
Overall, I enjoyed the book...primarily because it challenged me both in its style and in its plot points. While some developments were painfully obvious long before they occurred...that's kind of true in life too. We all know couples that everyone else knew would divorce long before they did. It's kind of like real-life foreshadowing. I found some of the descriptions of events far-fetched and over-romanticized...but the characters were real and complex enough to keep me interested.
Di
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