Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Excerpt from Matrimony by Joshua Henkin, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reading Guide |  Reviews |  Readalikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

Matrimony by Joshua Henkin

Matrimony

A Novel

by Joshua Henkin
  • Critics' Consensus (6):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • First Published:
  • Oct 2, 2007, 304 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Aug 2008, 304 pages
  • Rate this book

About this Book

Print Excerpt


"A B-plus!"

"That's exactly what he said. He wanted at least an A-minus."

"Thomas Jefferson!" Mia said. "You have very arrogant dreams." She placed her foot behind Julian and pushed him over her leg so he tumbled backward to the floor. As he fell, his legs kicked up and his testicles did, too. "Be careful," she said. "I was on the wrestling team in high school."

"You were?"

"Field hockey," she said. "Close enough."

"Come," he said. "Let's shower."

She stepped into the stall and raised her face to the water, holding her hair in a fist behind her head. He took her by the shoulders and drew her close to him, feeling the press of her nose against his face.

Afterward, in class, he missed her already and he'd only just seen her. And when he saw her again she said she'd missed him, too. She loved everything about him, she said: the tiny dimple on his right elbow, the way his hair was so straight coming down over his forehead, all of it dark brown it was almost black except for a little patch of blond above the left ear. "I'm one-two-hundredth albino," he told her. She loved his toenails, she said, and the way in his sleep he wrapped her hair around his fingers. That was how she liked waking up in the morning, with her hair twirled taut around him.

Excerpted from Matrimony by Joshua Henkin. Copyright © 2007 by Joshua Henkin.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

The low brow and the high brow

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.