Read Recently “Matrimony” by Josh Henken
Title: Matrimony
Author: Joshua Henkin
Origins: Josh Henkin emailed me through our mutual friend MJ Rose last year to let me know he was coming to San Francisco for an event at the Booksmith, my neighborhood bookstore. Josh is also the brother of UC Berkeley professor David Henkin whom I’m friendly with through my synagogue.
Synopsis: Twenty years in the span of a marriage beginning when Julian and Mia meet in college in the 1980s. Has chapters taking place in both Ann Arbor and San Francisco which means its subtitle should read "written especially with Kevin Smokler in mind."
Verdict: This is my favorite book of this year. It’s not complicated, stylish, thick or hip and I don’t care. A great story, about good, flawed people, told so effortlessly that think you must know them, or know someone knows them or didn’t you spot one of them at a show last night or in line at the post office? It goes down like hot chocolate but feels like an energy drink. You want you sprint to your desk immediately and write your own grand version of your own grand relationship, if only you could as well as Josh Henkin does with these people who don’t exist.
Henkin reminds me of early Jennifer Egan (who blurbed Matrimony) or a Thisbe Nissen, both writers who focus on relationships and families and get unfairly pegged as lacking ambition because their characters are usually white, well-educated literates. I don’t hold that against these writers, even though they often address my demographic and I’m embarrassed of it sometimes. Empirically, it takes tremendous skill to write fiction that’s the equivalent of a great pop song: clear narrative, robust storytelling, pleasant on the throat but doesn’t feel like having chewing gum for dinner. It’s taking something that looks simple and executing about four times better than the criterion set by the genre. And it’s the kind of book I love to recommend because, for most, it not only does not disappoint but surprises.
So I recommend Matrimony like I would recommend a sunset. It’s not going to blow you away with originality. But it’s there, elegant, quiet and beautiful, like the end of the day. It never boasts nor fails to live up to itself and it waits, with dignity, for others to find it and for you to return.