How I Married Karen

I’m a little at a loss as to how to review “How I Married Karen,” because I’m afraid that giving it the extremely high praise it deserves will sound fatuous. Surely a book can’t be this good? Well, yes it can. Within 164 light, bubbly, moving, funny pages, Robert J. Avrech packs in so much: the abiding wonder of finding one’s true love; the academic woes of a square peg in school’s relentlessly round holes; life as an Orthodox Jew in New York in the 1960s and 1970s; the way in which movies provide so much of a backdrop to and reference point for our lives; adolescent angst; morality; and patriotism. That Mr. Avrech manages so gracefully to crowd so many ideas into one small book is a testament to both his skill as a writer and to his transcendent love for his wife, Karen Avrech. After I gobbled up the book, I felt lighter and happier for the rest of the day.