Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Hey Harry, Hey Matilda
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.rachelhulin.com/
CITY: Providence
STATE: RI
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.heyharryheymatilda.com/ * http://www.rachelhulin.com/about/ * https://www.wired.com/2015/10/rachel-hulin-hey-harry-hey-matilda-instagram/ * http://time.com/4049928/hey-harry-hey-matilda/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Brown University, B.A.; New York University, M.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Photographer and writer. Has worked as photo editor at Rolling Stone, Radar, and Nerve.com. Has exhibited photos at Jen Bekman Gallery, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Wallspace Gallery, New York Photo Festival, and ClampArt Gallery. Has lectured at Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, and other schools.
WRITINGS
Contributor of essays to online publications, including Daily Beast, Huffington Post, and Photography Post. Photographs published in periodicals, including Martha Stewart Living, New York Times, New Republic, and Real Simple.
SIDELIGHTS
Writer and photographer Rachel Hulin’s novel Hey Harry, Hey Matilda is the tale of the lives and loves of a twin brother and sister told through their e-mail correspondence. It was published in book form in 2017, but the story had a life on the Internet earlier. Hulin released it as a series of Instagram posts over several months in 2015, with accompanying photos, some from her archives, some taken especially for the project, with friends of Hulin’s portraying Harry and Matilda. Years earlier, Hulin had begun writing the story on a Web log, but she put it aside for other projects, including a children’s book. When she returned to it, she realized it needed something extra, and that something was photographs, she told Lourdes Garcia-Navarro on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition. “I think it’s a testament to what words and images together can do and what added dimension that is,” Hulin said. Readers responded enthusiastically, and some even sent e-mails to Matilda. Of publishing on Instagram, she added: “I think it’s just sort of an obvious way to move literature, and it was a really fun way for me to explore this story.” Hulin further explained her creative process to Providence Journal contributor Liz Klinkenberg, and noted that she’s making a modern use of literary form with a long history. “I was comfortable pairing images with text in a way that enhances the story,” Hulin told Klinkenberg. “I also love telling stories in a serial way, the epistolary form is so much fun and allows you to introduce the characters and story slowly. ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ was written as letters and I loved that.”
Matilda and Harry, last name Goodman, are in their early thirties and have experienced frustration in their careers. Matilda is a wedding photographer in New York City, but she wants to use her skills on more artistic endeavors. Harry is a nontenured literature professor at a college in Connecticut, but he longs for success as a writer. Both also have problems in their romantic lives. Matilda impulsively tells her boyfriend she has a dead twin, and she has to keep up the pretense because he says he has a dead twin too. Harry has an affair with one of his students and claims a poem of hers as his own when he submits it to the New Yorker. They have a close but unusual relationship, as their parents divorced when the twins were young, and each grew up with a different parent. The story follows Harry and Matilda over the course of a year, and eventually some secrets and surprises emerge. It is divided into six sections, illustrated with photos and diagrams.
Several reviewers found Hey Harry, Hey Matilda engaging and the characters likable despite their often-questionable actions. “Hulin’s razor-sharp and sardonic writing propels this page-turner to a resolution that is equal parts happy and disturbing,” related Magan Szwarek in Booklist. A Kirkus Reviews contributor likewise praised Hulin’s skill with words, saying: “Her writing excels in its ability to make the twins appealing. “The email-exchange format leaves the reader feeling closely connected to the characters while Hulin’s humorous and intimate prose redeems them.” The use of e-mails, remarked Erin Holt in Library Journal, “makes their personalities jump right off the page.” Klinkenberg made a similar observation, saying: “The unique format allows a deep voyeurism into the minds of millennials and shows the reader that even good people can make some bad choices.” In the New York Daily News, Allison Chopin commented positively on the structure as well. “Hulin makes the most of her chosen form in this novel,” Chopin reported. She offered a caveat, noting: “Occasionally, this technique seems forced, as the emails must unrealistically recount events for the reader that the characters both already know about. But on the whole, it works.” A Publishers Weekly commentator summed up the novel as “an entertaining caper and a thought-provoking look at family, memory, and the complexities of love.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, December 1, 2016, Magan Szwarek, review of Hey Harry, Hey Matilda, p. 24.
Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 2016, review of Hey Harry, Hey Matilda.
Library Journal, December 1, 2016, Erin Holt, review of Hey Harry, Hey Matilda, p. 83.
New York Daily News, January 24, 2017, Allison Chopin, “Sibling Drama in the Digital Age.”
Providence Journal (Providence, RI), January 12, 2017, Liz Klinkenberg, “Providence Writer-Photographer Turns Blog into First Novel.”
Publishers Weekly, October 17, 2016, review of Hey Harry, Hey Matilda, p. 45.
Time, September 28, 2015, Sarah Begley, “This Haunting Novel about Twins Is Being Written on Instagram.”
ONLINE
Hey Harry, Hey Matilda Web site, http://www.heyharryheymatilda.com/ (July 29, 2o17), information on book.
National Public Radio Web site, http://www.npr.org/ (January 15, 2017), Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, “How to Tell a Story Through Emails” (transcript of Weekend Edition interview).
Rachel Hulin Home Page, http://www.rachelhulin.com (July 29. 2017).
Wired, https://www.wired.com/ (October 6, 2015), Taylor Glascock, “Telling a Strange Love Story, Post by Post on Instagram.”*
This Haunting Novel About Twins Is Being Written On Instagram
Sarah Begley
Sep 28, 2015
IDEASSarah Begley is a staff writer for TIME.
In 2012, Jennifer Egan caused a sensation with her story "Black Box," which was first tweeted out in increments of 140-characters or less, as Twitter dictates, then published by the New Yorker in short-story format. Now, writer and photographer Rachel Hulin (known for the Flying Henry photo series and children's book) is posting pieces of a story from a novel on Instagram, accompanied by haunting images from the lives of a pair of twins.
Hey Harry, Hey Matilda is an epistolary novel of correspondence between the title siblings, who share the mundane details of their lives, reflections on their childhood and concerns about the future. A strange intensity courses through their conversations—is it sexual tension, or just the incredible closeness of twins?
The story is playing out on a website and Instagram feed filled with melancholy photos—a broken watch, a melting stick of butter, a chandelier and lots of obscured faces—alongside emails between Harry and Matilda Goodman. Hulin first experimented with the story about five years ago on a blog that she has since taken down; she sees the new website as a kind of trailer for the final project, an actual book whose manuscript is already written (though she doesn't yet have a publisher). "It's sort of a work in progress," Hulin says. "It's interesting to see how it manifests on Instagram ... That's what I like about it: it's a living, breathing project, because it's already changing a little, and it will change, I imagine, as people interact with it."
The posts will take place "in real time" relative to the story, over the course of about nine months. In the mean time, Hulin shared the following two photos and snippets, the next to appear on the Instagram feed, with TIME:
Rachel Hulin
Hey Harry
HEY HARRY
The two girls we were working with in Martha's Vineyard had deep tans they slathered on from a pink bottle and really long, fake fingernails. They snuck boys into the dormer and rarely included me in their conversations. But if they had liked me I would have liked them.
One other girl in particular was more charming than I was and also prettier of course and the family found out she was at art school. The father would take her around the house at cocktail hour --we’d put out crudité (yeah, I didn’t know what it was either) – and a cheese plate and Scotch, and he’d show her his painting collection, ask about her drawings. He had a Transatlantic accent although he was born in Ohio and he sometimes wore an ascot. I’d hover around them and pick up the used blue cocktail napkins with wet rings on them from the low-ball tumblers and watch.
My favorite family member was the youngest daughter who was glamorous and untouchable when I picked her up from the airport.
She would come back to the serving area in between courses and we’d smoke menthols and drink malt liquor together. Her name was Martina and she had dramatic yelling fights with her father that echoed through the house at night. She made “dad” into five syllables. “Da a a a a d!” High-pitched. She always had a fresh manicure, with black glossy polish ten or so years before black was all the edgy rage. I opened her diet sodas by the pool and handed them to her. She didn’t want to pop the cans herself.
Rachel Hulin
Hey Harry, part two
Hey Harry,
Max came to visit on the fourth of July weekend. His eyes looked especially blue and he was talking about other girls. Older girls, girls with accents. I think he thought I was over him. He was of course un-indoctrinated in the ways of being the help so he kept making the mistake of wandering into the main house and nearly fraternizing with the family.
“Do you think I have a chance with Martina?” he kept asking me.
And then he’d finish the Champagne that had been left out and gone flat.
I went to sleep early one night after my run, tired and keyed up from the asthma medication I’d been popping to look less rhomboid in my maid outfit. When I stepped into the blinding morning sun the next day to skim the leaves from the surface of the water I saw two bathing suits mingling together, Max’s and Martina’s, four feet down on the dappled, watery pool bottom and I sat down and cried.
At the end of the summer the girls with the fake tans had a blowout fight because it turned out they were secret bisexual lovers and were having a jealousy thing.
Which proved I didn’t know anything about anything.
I missed you, Harry. You should have come to see me.
Telling a Strange Love Story, Post by Post on Instagram
AUTHOR AND PHOTOGRAPHER Rachel Hulin is releasing her new novel on a most
unexpected platform: Instagram.
Hey Harry Hey Matilda follows the story of Harry and Matilda Goodman, 30-
something fraternal twins from New England. Matilda is an artist in Brooklyn,
though she’s begrudgingly making a living as a wedding photographer (she even has
her own website!). Harry is a writer and an untenured English professor at the
University of Connecticut. The novel follows their correspondence as they fumble
through adulthood and their romantic feelings for one another. And it’s told through
single-photo posts on Instagram.
Hulin began to share pieces of the novel’s nearly 200 pages on @heyharryheymatilda
in a few weeks ago, and plans to roll the story out over the next nine months—a
period that roughly follows the timeline of her story. The narrative is meandering
and indirect, building up slowly over time through seemingly random conversations.
The format is simple: Hulin shares a seemingly innocuous photo and uses the caption
to tell the story in the form of emails between Harry and Matilda.
“For years I worked as a photo editor, pairing images with text, and I’ve always felt
that images enhance text,” Hulin says. “I also love telling stories in a serial way,
slowly introducing characters to readers, having them become involved and start to
1
TAYLOR GLASCOCK PHOTO 10.06.15 7:00 AM
15
7/9/2017 Telling a Strange Love Story, Post by Post on Instagram | WIRED
https://www.wired.com/2015/10/rachel-hulin-hey-harry-hey-matilda-instagram/ 2/9
comment and further the story— I think the interaction of readers really enhances
the telling of a story.”
Feedback has been positive so far, with readers referring friends, leaving comments,
and eagerly awaiting the next installment. Hulin even hints that her audience could
even influence the direction of the narrative. “I could totally see adapting parts of the
story as it progresses—unfurling it slowly lets me rethink certain passages and
amend them slightly. It’s like a long, slow process of editing, with pictures,” she says.
Hulin began writing Hey Harry Hey Matilda five years ago, but the format was quite
different. It was a standalone blog of jokes and innuendo between the twins, with an
occasional photo or illustration. The story didn’t have a real endgame until years
later when Hulin decided to revisit the work and write a manuscript, which she
finished last spring. The photos are a mix of images from Hulin’s archives and images
she’s made specifically for the tale.
Harry and Matilda RACHEL HULIN
7/9/2017 Telling a Strange Love Story, Post by Post on Instagram | WIRED
https://www.wired.com/2015/10/rachel-hulin-hey-harry-hey-matilda-instagram/ 3/9
An interactive website accompanies the Instagram account, creating a multimedia
experience. Readers can listen to music and learn humorous tidbits about the the two
characters. Matilda, for example, majored in English with a minor in Russian
Literature, something her mother called a “recipe for unemployment.” At the tender
age of 12, Harry voted for his opponent in a middle school election and lost by one
vote. Hulin also plans on periodically adding “secret content” to the website and
starting an accompanying newsletter. “I think they [photography and writing] really
inform each other, and it’s so nice that something like Instagram can allow them to
co-exist,” Hulin says.
Hey Harry Hey Matilda doesn’t have a publisher yet, but that may change in the
future. In the mean time, Hulin is embracing the freedom of self-publishing. “This
way I can find my readers first, and show a vision for the work that is difficult to do in
just a paper manuscript,” she says. “It’s breathing life into it first; I’m really just
reversing the order of things.”
UPDATE 12:03 EST 10/07/15. This story was updated to note that Harry and Matilda
are fraternal twins.
Rachel Hulin is a photographer and writer.
Her photographs have been shown at Jen Bekman Gallery, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Wallspace Gallery, The New York Photo Festival, and ClampArt Gallery, by which she is represented.
Hulin worked as a photo editor in New York for many years; titles included Rolling Stone, Radar Magazine, and Nerve.com. Her personal essays and art writing have appeared in The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, PDN, and The Photography Post, which she co-founded. She has lectured about her own work, professional practices, and about the role of social media in photography at ICP, SVA, Parsons, Brown University, RISD, and MIAD.
Editorial clients include Martha Stewart Living Magazine, The New York Times, The New Republic, and Real Simple.
She has a BA from Brown University and an MA from NYU.
Rachel's Flying Henry series is a children’s book of the same name, released by PowerHouse Books in 2013.
Her first novel, Hey Harry Hey Matilda, was released by Doubleday in 2017.
How To Tell A Story Through Emails
Listen· 6:56
Toggle more options
January 15, 20178:02 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday
Hey Harry, Hey Matilda is a funny and sometimes icky story of twins. It's told through the twins' emails and unfolds around a lie. Author Rachel Hulin tells Lulu Garcia-Navarro about her new novel.
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Twins Matilda and Harry are close. Matilda is a wedding photographer. She's a hypochondriac, a failed artist, and she's prone to lies - little ones and really big ones. Harry is a professor - unpublished, untenured, and, as it turns out, unscrupulous, not unlike his twin Matilda. They are both 35. Rachel Hulin's new novel - it's called "Hey Harry, Hey Matilda" - is the story of these siblings. It's told through their emails and charts and graphs and drawings. What emerges is something very weird, very surprising, very, very funny and just a little bit icky.
Rachel Hulin joins us from her home in Rhode Island. Thanks for being here.
RACHEL HULIN: Thank you so much.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: OK. So this novel begins with a lie. Tell us the lie. It's Matilda that told it. It's sort of like the catalyst for the novel.
HULIN: Yeah. The first lie is just a mistake that tumbles out, and Matilda is dealing with it. She tells a boyfriend that she has a dead twin. And it turns out that the boyfriend also has a dead twin, which is unfortunate for her because she is immediately stuck in that situation.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, I have to say - when I read that, who would kill off their twin? What does that say about who she is in your mind?
HULIN: I don't know. You know - well, I do know. I feel that she is trying to be a more interesting person to those around her. And she's sort of deeply insecure, and she gets performative. And she had too much to drink, and she just blurted this out. In any case, it's - becomes a big problem for her to get out of.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: One of the things that's so interesting about these two characters - and it's done in this form - right? - of these letters or emails back and forth between these two siblings - is the intimacy that there is between them and the knowledge that siblings have and twins have. Describe to me, in your viewpoint, you know, who are these two characters? Who is Harry, and who is Matilda?
HULIN: Well, they're both sort of at this late stage of child adulthood that a lot of people are in in New York, I think, when they're in their late 20s, early 30s. And they're really trying to figure out who they're going to be. There's a lot of societal pressure to have families and partners and careers and do good for the world.
Harry is a professor in Connecticut. And they're both creatives. One of them, Harry, is a writer, and Matilda is a photographer. And so they're very similar, and they're sharing their stories of trying to be successful career-wise and also figure out what the next step for them is. And I think they're deeply anxious about what those steps will be.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And they're very funny. I want to read a section that kind of gets at their dynamic. They seem sort of very broken and weird, but they have this back-and-forth that's quite telling.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOOK, "HEY HARRY, HEY MATILDA")
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Reading) Harry, my favorite emotion is shame because it's the one I can deal with the least and the one that comes up the most. Thanks for asking.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Reading) Matilda, I didn't need to ask because I knew that already.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Reading) Harry, oh, well, did you know I've never made myself a sandwich?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Reading) Matilda, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Reading) Harry, say something mean to me so I can react badly.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Reading) Matilda, tomorrow I'll tell you the dream I had, and you won't be in it.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Reading) Harry, jerk.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, very irreverent, the kinds of interactions that you would have with your sibling that other people might not see. Let's talk a little bit about how this novel came about. I mean, it is the first, as I understand it, Instagram novel that actually started in that form and then made its way to publishing and not possibly vice versa or in other formations.
HULIN: It's had, like, really a weird life so far, I would say. It began as a blog that I started called "Harry and Matilda." And it was really just, like, a way for Matilda to get some things off her chest, and Harry would sort of come in and absolve her of things. And then I put it away. I ended up doing a children's book and then, years later, coming back to this idea, realizing it was sort of sitting there and I wanted to make it into a full manuscript.
And so I did that. I wrote a full manuscript really quickly, and it was sort of missing something, I felt like. So I - being a photographer-writer, I'm always trying to figure out exactly which medium I want to work in. So I decided to shoot pictures for the project. And so I spent a full summer casting the book, basically. I found some friends to be Harry and Matilda, and I put them in a tree. And I made a website for them.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And you have all these curated photographs, you know - a pair of painted toenails, a book of stories accompanied by emails. It has this entire life on Instagram.
HULIN: Yeah. And then a friend of mine, who is a publicist, said you should put it on Instagram. And it immediately really worked. And I think it's a testament to what words and images together can do and what added dimension that is. And it was really incredible to see because people were emailing Matilda with questions about their own creative lives.
And it was almost like PostSecret. Like, people were sending me their deepest, darkest secrets and lies because I think, obviously, they were really relating to Matilda and Harry getting themselves into sticky situations. And that's what I love about Matilda. She's, like, so flawed, and she admits it (laughter).
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do you think this is the future of how books could be given birth to? I mean, people have been looking for a long time on how to meld social media and novels and art.
HULIN: No, I'm thinking so much about that. It seems so obvious to have serialized things. I think people are taking in literature in much smaller, bite-sized pieces. I think people are so visually literate now in a way they weren't five years ago. Even a year ago, when I started this project on Instagram, most people's pictures did not have captions. I think it's just sort of an obvious way to move literature, and it was a really fun way for me to explore this story.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do you think Matilda and Harry remain sympathetic? They're really this mix of unlikable, charming. Do you think people can sort of embrace them fully?
HULIN: I think some people can. I mean, a friend of mine read the book and said, you know, I could never stay angry with Matilda for very long. But I'm sure other people will stay angry with them. And I think that in itself is interesting. I think that they bring up a lot of shame for people. I think that some people just find it icky. Definitely, people have strong reactions to this book one way or another, which is fascinating and, I think, sort of important and good. You know, I think thinking about taboos and doing the wrong thing and how that makes us feel is important. So I'm choosing to embrace that.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Rachel Hulin's book is called "Hey Harry, Hey Matilda."
Thanks so much for being with us.
HULIN: Thank you.
Quoted in Sidelights: “I was comfortable pairing images with text in a way that enhances the story.” Hulin says. “I also love telling stories in a serial way, the epistolary form is so much fun and allows you to introduce the characters and story slowly. ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ was written as letters and I loved that.”
The unique format allows a deep voyeurism into the minds of millennials and shows the reader that even good people can make some bad choices.
Providence writer-photographer turns blog into first novel
Rachel Hulin’s “Hey Harry, Hey Matilda” tells the story of fraternal twins through their email conversations.
By Liz Klinkenberg / Special to The Journal
Posted Jan 12, 2017 at 9:30 PM
Rachel Hulin has a knack for letting things take shape. The 38-year-old Providence writer and photographer has been developing the characters in her first novel, “Hey Harry, Hey Matilda,” for more than five years as she worked on other projects.
\“It really started as a blog that I wrote for just friends and family, and Matilda’s voice really began to emerge from that,” says Hulin. “Matilda’s twin brother, Harry, became her foil.”
Hulin is an accomplished photographer who produces stunning work with narrow fields of focus, saturated color palettes and long light that work together to achieve ethereal results. Her work is offered through ClampArt Gallery in New York City and is on artnet.com, an online database and auction house. Her photography has been featured in Martha Stewart Living, the New York Times, The New Republic and Real Simple.
Her blog is now polished into her first novel, published by Doubleday, and on Tuesday, Hulin will be at the Point Street Reading Series in Providence. The monthly series, held at The Village and hosted by Robin Kall, brings together a panel of authors with area bibliophiles for an evening of conversation.
Related content
Rhode Islander on TV show 'Hunted'
January 24, 2017
Authors read passages from their books and share stories about the process.
“The one thing I’ve learned from attending the Point Street Series,” says Hulin, “is that everyone says that ‘publishing has very strict rules and of course I accidentally broke them.’ It seems that rules are easier to break than you might realize. Nearly every author I’ve seen there has come to publishing in an untraditional way. So that’s something I like to try to remind myself of, to be foolish in my approach and not worry so much about how it’s supposed to be done.”
Hulin has always expressed herself visually and approached her book project much the same way.
“I spent a summer taking photos for the book,” says Hulin. “I cast two friends and chose scenes from the narrative. It really helped me encapsulate how I felt about the characters.”
Faux Instagram accounts and websites were created for the characters and they began to attract and engage followers.
“I was trying to exist in many places,” says Hulin. “People consume media differently today and this developed a whole online presence with readers who interacted with the characters. It was really a treat for me as a writer.”
While creating a name for herself as a photographer, Hulin spent much of her professional life working as a photo editor at Rolling Stone and People magazines, where she added images to text.
“I was comfortable pairing images with text in a way that enhances the story.” Hulin says. “I also love telling stories in a serial way, the epistolary form is so much fun and allows you to introduce the characters and story slowly. ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ was written as letters and I loved that.”
“Hey Harry, Hey Matilda” is a story told entirely through the email conversations between two fraternal twins who write about their lives and struggles as they make their way through their late 20s into adulthood.
There is romance, intrigue and some really bad mistakes that the two find ways to make right. The unique format allows a deep voyeurism into the minds of millennials and shows the reader that even good people can make some bad choices.
“Everyone in this book makes a bad mistake and survives,” says Hulin. “Matilda feels she’s such a failure as she goes through these crises but comes through the other side and ends up valuing herself a little more.”
The novel incorporates some of the photography Hulin posted on Instagram. “There aren’t really novels with photographs,” says Hulin, “and this could have been a full photo book.”
“Rachel is an amazing photographer,” says Kall. “She has written her debut novel on a really cool premise. The writing is very clever and poignant.”
Kall, who hosted Rhode Island’s “Reading with Robin” radio talk show and frequent author events, launched the Point Street Reading Series in 2016. This month’s event will feature four other authors: Fiona Davis, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Amy Poeppel and Bob Perlow, who will share stories and readings from their books.
“We’ve really built a strong reading community in Rhode Island,” says Kall. “In just 10 short months, this series has certainly filled a need here. The whole thing started off as a fun thing to do, and now we get 100 or more people to one of the events.”
Over the years, Kall has brought more than 60 authors to events in Rhode Island.
“This one will be very funny,” she says. “Bob Perlow used to open for comedians and his book, ‘The Warm-up Guy,’ is hysterical.”
Poeppel wrote about life in the admissions office in a competitive New York City prep school in “Small Admissions.” Davis and Ryan wrote suspenseful stories full of intrigue and comedic moments.
“It’s all a lot of fun,” says Kall. “And the conversation is lively. A lot of writers come with a project already in mind.”
Hulin has already started working on the next thing.
“I’m working on a futuristic feminist novel right now. We will see if that takes shape. I always start on one thing but often end up doing something else. I find it’s the fun side project that ends up resonating with people.”
If you go
What: Point Street Reading Series
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday; doors open at 7
Where: The Village, 373 Richmond St., Providence
Tickets: $5 at the door
Info: robinkall.com/point-street-reading-series/
— Liz Klinkenberg is a regular contributor to the Providence Journal. She can be reached at rifeedsri@gmail.com.
Quoted in Sidelights: Hulin's razor-sharp and sardonic
writing propels this page-turner to a resolution that is equal parts happy and disturbing.
Hey Harry, Hey Matilda
Magan Szwarek
Booklist.
113.7 (Dec. 1, 2016): p24.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Hey Harry, Hey Matilda.
By Rachel Hulin.
Jan. 2017. 288p. Doubleday, $25.95 (9780385541671).
Photographer and essayist Hulin's debut novel explores the relationship between thirtysomething fraternal twins Harry
and Matilda Goodman. The plot, divided into six parts and spanning a year, is delivered via the rapid-fire e-mail
correspondence between the siblings. Harry, a nontenured English professor at an unnamed university in the country,
and Matilda, a frustrated artist who pays her bills doing wedding photography in New York City, are disillusioned,
angsty, and seeking the answers to life's big questions amid a myriad of disastrous, hilarious choices. The unsettling
truth at the heart of their relationship is revealed as the two trade zingers, advice, and tender reminiscences about their
close, yet separate, adolescence (each grew up with a different parent after a divorce). Hulin's razor-sharp and sardonic
writing propels this page-turner to a resolution that is equal parts happy and disturbing. Fans of recent tragicomic
epistolary novels like Maria Semple's Whered You Go, Bernadette (2012) and Cecilia Ahern's Love, Rosie (2004) will
find much to enjoy here.--Magan Szwarek
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Szwarek, Magan. "Hey Harry, Hey Matilda." Booklist, 1 Dec. 2016, p. 24+. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA474717684&it=r&asid=85e94d6c332c5d89814aa693fef7f2a5.
Accessed 9 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A474717684
7/9/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1499644935224 2/4
Quoted in Sidelights: makes their
personalities jump right off the page.
Hulin, Rachel. Hey Harry, Hey Matilda
Erin Holt
Library Journal.
141.20 (Dec. 1, 2016): p83.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Hulin, Rachel. Hey Harry, Hey Matilda. Doubleday. Jan. 2017.288p. ISBN 9780385541671. $25.95; ebk. ISBN
9780385541688. F
Twins Matilda and Harry Goodman are both going through a rough patch. At 32, she is a struggling wedding
photographer and he is a literature professor on a not-so-fast tenure track, trying to get published to boot. Both are
looking for love, and Matilda thinks she's found it in a dermatologist she meets online, while Harry believes his future
is with one of his students, whom he makes the unethical decision to sleep with. Hulin's first adult novel (after the
children's photo book, Flying Henry) is told entirely in emails between Matilda and Harry, which makes their
personalities jump right off the page. Full of sibling banter, online fights, and more, this adult debut is a fun, quirky
read that is perfect for those who enjoy a good dose of laughter with their familial fiction. Hulin keeps up the pace as
she drops in lies, scandal, and misguided ambitions throughout this punchy tale. VERDICT This quick read can easily
be devoured in one sitting, and a surprise twist will leave readers waiting for Hulin's next work.--Erin Holt,
Williamson Cty. P.L., Franklin, TN
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Holt, Erin. "Hulin, Rachel. Hey Harry, Hey Matilda." Library Journal, 1 Dec. 2016, p. 83+. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA472371169&it=r&asid=88b0e61296f0be7a33ab10d7ec320f76.
Accessed 9 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A472371169
7/9/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1499644935224 3/4
Quoted in Sidelights: an entertaining caper and a thought-provoking look at family, memory, and the
complexities of love.
Hey Harry, Hey Matilda
Publishers Weekly.
263.42 (Oct. 17, 2016): p45.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Hey Harry, Hey Matilda
Rachel Hulin. Doubleday, $25.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-385-54167-1
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In her debut novel, Hulin explores the complicated relationship between 32-year-old fraternal twins, Harry and
Matilda Goodman, through their email correspondence. Matilda is an eccentric Brooklyn-based wedding
photographer, and Harry is an English professor at a Connecticut university hoping to publish and procure tenure. The
content of their emails spans their daily experiences, worries about the future, and memories. They share secrets--
Matilda admits that she told her boyfriend that her twin had died; Harry confides in her after making an unethical
move in his career--while avoiding other secrets. Their messages are often laugh-out-loud funny, as when Matilda
recounts the weddings she photographs, and when they forward each other emails from their philosophizing, selfabsorbed
father. As the siblings meander through various topics, some messages seem superfluously detailed;
however, this slowly leads to a disclosure that puts their correspondence into a different light. Visual cues seem
integral to Hulin's project--Matilda illustrates feelings with diagrams, and photographs separate each section. Though
the narrative is constrained by the epistolary form, even when the twins prompt each other to write a scene "like a
movie" or "like a story," the book is an entertaining caper and a thought-provoking look at family, memory, and the
complexities of love. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Hey Harry, Hey Matilda." Publishers Weekly, 17 Oct. 2016, p. 45. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA468700000&it=r&asid=98d9f06e74af1c213f1ce59b2ab3ad37.
Accessed 9 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A468700000
7/9/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1499644935224 4/4
Quoted in Sidelights: Her writing excels in its ability to make the twins appealing. The email-exchange format
leaves the reader feeling closely connected to the characters while Hulins humorous and intimate prose redeems them.
Rachel Hulin: HEY HARRY, HEY MATILDA
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 1, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Rachel Hulin HEY HARRY, HEY MATILDA Doubleday (Adult Fiction) 25.95 ISBN: 978-0-385-54167-1
Epistolary novel about endearing and indecent siblings.Twins Matilda, an artist who is making ends meet as a wedding
photographer, and Harry, a writer and professor, have a candid and close relationship. Matilda is bold, spiritual, and
self-centered while Harry is stoic, smart, and sarcastic; both are creative and funny. Communicating via email, they
share most every aspect of their lives with one another: from the details of their romantic relationships to anxieties
about work (Harry is desperate for the stability of tenure) and health (Matilda is sure she's destined for a horrible
disease). At first the pair seem like ordinary, if tightknit, siblings. But during the course of the novel (which takes
place over a year, from September to September) it becomes clear that they are not always scrupulous. Harry falls in
love with one of his students, a move morally ambiguous in itself, and makes matters worse by claiming one of her
poems is his when submitting it for publication in the New Yorker. The subsequent acclaim gives him the career
security he has been longing for, but at what cost? Matilda makes her own dubious choice, building an entire
relationship with her boyfriend on the foundation of a lie: that her twin brother is dead. These are just two moments in
what turns out to be a lifelong series of ethically questionable behaviors. Yet despite their misdeeds, despite the final,
shocking truths of their relationship, Harry and Matilda remain sympathetic charactersperhaps because of what the
reader comes to know about the many failings of their parents or perhaps because of the twins friendship, their
badinage and bond. This is the first novel from Hulin, whose previous book, Flying Henry (2013), is a childrens
fantasy-photography book. Her writing excels in its ability to make the twins appealing. The email-exchange format
leaves the reader feeling closely connected to the characters while Hulins humorous and intimate prose redeems them.
A novel as remarkably witty as it is frightful.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Rachel Hulin: HEY HARRY, HEY MATILDA." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Oct. 2016. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA465181872&it=r&asid=0a1caeffb1a7a16a305088d05521fa9b.
Accessed 9 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A465181872
‘Hey Harry, Hey Matilda’ review: Sibling drama in the digital age
BY ALLISON CHOPIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, January 24, 2017, 6:57 PM
Tweet
email
“Hey Harry, Hey Matilda” is out now
“Hey Harry, Hey Matilda” is out now. (DOUBLEDAY)
TITLE
HEY HARRY, HEY MATILDA
AUTHOR:
Rachel Hulin
Fraternal twins Harry and Matilda have an interesting relationship.
They’re quite close for siblings in their 30s, and they regularly communicate via email. In fact, Rachel Hulin’s “Hey Harry, Hey Matilda” is told entirely through Harry and Matilda’s emails.
Matilda is a struggling artist in New York City working as a wedding photographer, and Harry is a writing professor in Connecticut who’s thus far failed to be published or earn tenure.
They seem to tell each other everything. But their story begins with a lie. Matilda, for some reason, has told her boyfriend that she had a twin who died. This inevitably creates some family drama when she brings her beau home for the holidays; meanwhile, Harry is dating an undergrad and making some questionable decisions to advance his career.
9 books to warm your cold, bitter heart this winter
As these things come to a head, the siblings delve into their troubled psyches — mostly Matilda’s at first, though Harry has his share of issues too — as well as their dysfunctional family, failed romances, and their relationship with each other.
Hulin makes the most of her chosen form in this novel. Her characters’ personalities come through in their email-writing styles — Matilda’s messages are expansive and self-absorbed, Harry’s missives more pointed and judgmental.
Their correspondences often include short stories, poems and diagrams, serving to break up their back-and-forth and allowing plot points to be revealed in more interesting ways. Occasionally, this technique seems forced, as the emails must unrealistically recount events for the reader that the characters both already know about. But on the whole, it works.
And lest a novel told in emails seem too 1998, Hulin also created an Instagram account for her characters after she wrote the book. Curious internet users have been watching Harry and Matilda’s story unfold alongside Hulin’s photography, and the result is a haunting and touching juxtaposition, compared to the mostly hilarious book.
‘A Gambler’s Anatomy’ review: Jonathan Lethem’s latest
The lives and correspondences of this pair are funny, bizarre and at times distressing, as Harry and Matilda eventually confront uncomfortable truths. These characters aren’t always likeable. But the thrill of this novel is being taken along for their ride.
“Hey Harry, Hey Matilda” is out now from Doubleday.