Murray Finch

Murray Finch is one of Henry Page’s two closest friends, an Australian teenager whose deliberately exaggerated manner supplies much of the group’s comic energy. Beneath his jokes and swagger, however, he is capable of investing deeply in romance: his breakup with Seeta Ganguly continues to shape his choices months later, and his friends repeatedly find themselves balancing affection for him with concern about his persistence.

Identity and Public Persona

At seventeen, Murray is tall and muscular, with tan skin, shoulder-length curly blond hair, and a teenage mustache. His parents immigrated to the United States about six years earlier, but he consciously retains an Australian-sounding way of speaking. He uses Australian slang, sometimes in an exaggerated bushman style, and Henry observes that Murray can speak more conventionally but tends to put the accent back on because it appeals to women. The performance is therefore not simply a trace of where he came from; it is also a social strategy he knowingly adopts.

Murray’s references help make that persona legible to his friends. He regards Crocodile Dundee as an exceptional cultural achievement for Australians, and he has a ready repertoire of phrases that he deploys even when the people around him do not need persuading of his origins. When Henry challenges him to stop performing the slang, the exchange establishes their easy familiarity: Murray can tease Henry about a girl without the conversation becoming formal or guarded. His friends recognize the act, but its theatricality is part of the pleasure and friction of knowing him.

Friendship and Everyday Life

Murray and Lola Leung are already in Henry’s basement when he comes downstairs, absorbed in GTA V on his PS4. The basement is an untidy, makeshift retreat, with mismatched furniture, faux-Persian rugs on concrete, an old refrigerator, and a badly mounted elk head. The setting places Murray within Henry’s domestic life rather than at the edge of it: he and Lola have settled in and are playing as if the house and its comforts are shared territory. Their friendship allows blunt teasing, and Murray quickly notices Henry’s attention to a girl and calls him out for following her.

His jokes also register as part of a familiar friendship network that continues beyond casual gaming. When Henry returns home after driving Grace Town, Murray and Lola immediately read romantic significance into the encounter. Murray’s response is playful rather than solemn, but it shows how closely he and Lola watch Henry’s behavior and how readily the friends discuss each other’s uncertain romantic lives. The group’s humor does not erase vulnerability; it gives them a shared way to approach it.

Seeta Ganguly and the Persistence of First Love

Murray’s relationship with Seeta had lasted five months and ended near the close of junior year. During that time, he learned to cook biryani and samosas and regularly posted admiring messages about her on Facebook. He also used a nickname for her that originated in his mishearing or choosing not to pronounce her name. Seeta herself approved of it after hearing it, and their friends followed her lead. The combination of earnest effort, public declarations, and joking familiarity captures how the group remembers the relationship: brief, but grand in Murray’s telling and consequential in his feelings.

After the breakup, Murray does not readily accept the distance between them. In the second week of October, after nine days without hearing from Seeta, he plays Wonderwall on his guitar outside her house in hopes of reconciliation. The attempt ends not with renewed closeness but with calls to the police and a low-speed chase through the neighborhood. Henry and the others respond to this episode by asking Madison Carlson, known for gathering school gossip, to find out what is happening with Seeta. Her inquiry establishes that Seeta is single, while also conveying that her father had called the police over Murray’s behavior. The answer gives Murray information but does not resolve his attachment.

Murray’s questions about Seeta continue to frame his romantic hopes as a dramatic story, complete with imagined rivals and exaggerated threats. At a gathering, he is seen talking to Seeta and clasping her hands while she appears unimpressed. Lola recognizes the pattern and wants to intervene before he begins singing love songs to her again. The scene makes the limits of his performance visible: the gestures may be theatrical, but Seeta’s response does not match the reconciliation he hopes for, and his friends are left to manage the discomfort.

Heartbreak and the Friends’ Response

The most striking reversal comes when Lola tells Henry that Seeta has a new boyfriend. Murray had asked whether she had heard anything further, and after receiving the news he sinks to his knees, lies face down in the grass, and refuses to get up for about twenty minutes. Lola describes him as possibly dead and asks Henry to come to the football field, where the group has been left alone. Henry agrees to collect him. The episode converts Murray’s familiar romantic melodrama into a real practical concern: the jokes remain, but his friends must respond to the depth of his distress rather than merely laugh at its presentation.

That response also reveals how care circulates among the friends. Murray has often made his feelings a public performance, but the group does not abandon him when the performance gives way to grief. Lola stays present long enough to seek help, and Henry comes when asked. Murray’s emotional excess is a source of comic material for them, yet their actions show that it is not treated as an excuse to dismiss him.

Narrative Role and Significance

Murray’s scenes often pivot from comic bravado to unguarded feeling. His Australian slang, romantic declarations, and outrageous reactions make him an entertaining presence, but the recurring Seeta episodes give those traits a cost: his persistence can trouble other people, and his attachment leaves him vulnerable to news he cannot control. The contrast prevents him from being only the group’s joke-teller. His friends can recognize the absurdity of his behavior and still understand that the heartbreak underneath it is genuine.

His friendship with Henry also creates a useful counterpoint to Henry’s own uncertain romantic life. Murray notices Henry’s interest in Grace Town and teases him about it, while Henry and Lola later become part of the support system around Murray’s unresolved feelings for Seeta. The resulting exchanges make romance a shared, imperfect subject among friends rather than a private ideal. Even the group’s jokes about redemption and other absurd theme ideas draw on their common history, including the fallout surrounding Murray’s beloved pet fish. In this social world, teasing is one language of closeness, but showing up when a friend is overwhelmed is another.