A Dual Inheritance

Starred review from February 11, 2013
Two college chums—one an ambitious Jew, the other a privileged, guilt-burdened WASP—who first meet in 1963 as Harvard seniors find their lives separating and intersecting around the same woman over many years, in Hershon’s searing novel about class, ethnicity, and love (both platonic and romantic). Ed Cantrowitz is straight out of Dorchester, Mass., abrasive but winningly forthright; Hugh Shipley, heir to a valued name but decayed fortune, is deeply ambivalent about both his old-money connections and his own obvious charm; and Helen, Hugh’s high school sweetheart, all forge a connection that defies conventional wisdom. Even though their intimacy comes to a nominal end early in their lives, for reasons known only to Helen and Ed, the impact of this connection echoes through decades, as each goes his or her separate way, living life, raising families, working in Africa, Haiti, or Wall Street, and, in one case, going to prison. The intensely detailed love triangle is reminiscent of an East Coast elite answer to the Midwestern trio of Freedom, but with mere keen observation in place of that other novel’s sweeping moral pronouncements. Hershon (The German Bride) explores the ways we can, and can’t, escape our backgrounds. Agent: Elizabeth Sheinkman, WME Entertainment.