false 165014 1330763 0375424350 9780375424359 159 <![CDATA[Matrimony: A Novel]]> http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1330763.Matrimony_A_Novel 3.10 490
When he arrives, in the fall of 1986, Julian meets Carter Heinz, a scholarship student from California with whom he develops a strong but ambivalent friendship. Carter’s mother, desperate to save money for his college education, used to buy him reversible clothing, figuring she was getting two items for the price of one. Now, spending time with Julian, Carter seethes with resentment. He swears he will grow up to be wealthy–wealthier, even, than Julian himself.

Then, one day, flipping through the college facebook, Julian and Carter see a photo of Mia Mendelsohn. Mia from Montreal, they call her. Beautiful, Jewish, the daughter of a physics professor at McGill, Mia is–Julian and Carter agree–dreamy, urbane, stylish, refined.

But Julian gets to Mia first, meeting her by chance in the college laundry room. Soon they begin a love affair that–spurred on by family tragedy–will carry them to graduation and beyond, taking them through several college towns, over the next ten years. Then Carter reappears, working for an Internet company in California, and he throws everyone’s life into turmoil: Julian’s, Mia’s, his own.

Starting at the height of the Reagan era and ending in the new millennium, Matrimony is about love and friendship, about money and ambition, desire and tensions of faith. It asks what happens to a marriage when it is confronted by betrayal and the specter of mortality. What happens when people marry younger than they’d expected? Can love endure the passing of time?

In its emotional honesty, its luminous prose, its generosity and wry wit, Matrimony is a beautifully 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.]]> 165014 3.11 557 181 2007 284084 0399141162 9780399141164 4 <![CDATA[Swimming across the Hudson]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173406047m/284084.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173406047s/284084.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/284084.Swimming_across_the_Hudson 3.29 24 Swimming Across the Hudson. Ben knows what he's talking about: the sons of different birth mothers, he and his brother Jonathan were both adopted by Orthodox Jewish parents and brought up on Manhattan's Upper West Side in a religious/intellectual/political hothouse that left them gasping for air and the opportunity to figure themselves out. For Ben, claiming an identity means meeting his birth mother, an event that is both shocking--she informs him he wasn't born a Jew--and depressing--he's bored by her. For Jonathan, it means admitting his homosexuality to his family.

Exploring serious issues of identity, family, and where you turn when the chips are down, Swimming Across the Hudson is filled with perceptive insights and told in quiet, fluid prose. This auspicious first novel augurs well for Joshua Henkin.

]]> 165014 3.11 557 181 1997 7275187 0307472671 9780307472670 0 <![CDATA[Matrimony]]> http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7275187-matrimony 0.0 0 165014 3.11 557 181 2008