The Marrying of Chani Kaufman - Eve Harris

A guest review by Jayne White

Eve Harris's debut novel is set within the Charedi Jewish community in North London. Documentaries featuring closed communities with distinctive lifestyles have been popular in recent years. As I recall, we started off with respectful rather highbrow representations of faith groups and ended up with The Only Way is Essex and My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. Whether we watch much television or not we've probably become familiar with the 'script' for these. We tune in expecting to see daily life, festivals, rites of passage and those who struggle to conform. I think this influences our expectations of novels set in these environments and we almost come to it with a checklist and a worry that it will be formulaic.

Well, The Marrying of Chani Kaufman does cover off all the points in the checklist. We find out about home lives, schools, the keeping of the Sabbath, wedding and courtship rituals and how some of the characters are very weighed down by rules and pressure from other community members. However, the novel is not formulaic; it is astonishingly accomplished for a debut and contains some amazingly well drawn characters.

The novel features three central relationships. Chani and Baruch are a young couple, raised and educated in their tradition. Their courtship was arranged with the help of a matchmaker. They have been kept 'pure', in their words, and arrive at their wedding day without having  held hands or kissed. They seek advice from more experienced members of the community, but they get brushed off at every attempt.

Rabbi Chaim Zilberman and his wife Rivka, or 'The Rebbetzin' as she's known, are a middle-aged couple and well respected by the people belonging to their synagogue. They started out as students in Israel, quite relaxed in their observance. Gradually, under the influence of their studies and their friends they moved into the ultra-Orthodox way of life with Chaim always that bit further in front. They're counselling Baruch and Chani in the run up to their wedding ceremony, but are both painfully aware that their marriage is in crisis.

Avromi is the Zilberman's son.  He's studying Law and venturing outside the community for the first time.  He's fallen for Shola, a fellow student who is mixed race, catholic and someone he can't tell his family about.

Whilst we learn about the characters' relationships with each other, we are also aware of the ever-present relationship they have with their religious lifestyle. Chani is that little bit too lively and inquisitive to fit the pattern of the ideal young Charedi girl, and she didn't go to religious college after finishing at school, which is a black mark in her mother-in-law's eyes. As devout as Baruch is, he would really prefer to study English Literature instead of religion, which is seen as the highest form of study, and is what his father insists on. The sheltered nature of their lives is very striking as they move through the secular areas of London, but are only able to see them in the context of how they've been raised.

For Chaim and Rivka religion has stopped being something which imbues and enhances ordinary everyday life with meaning and significance. It's now become something which imprisons them and separates them from each other. The tone is set early on when Rivka miscarries their baby in bed one night. She has to ring for an ambulance because her husband is more panicked by being touched by the 'uncleanliness' of her blood than by the fact that she's bleeding dramatically. He then goes on to fret over her being seen by the male paramedics and the ambulance can't move off until a neighbour has found something to cover Rivka's hair.  It's only when we hear Chaim's prayers that we realise that he still loves her, and of course Rivka doesn't hear those.

Avromi is pulled in two directions. His community was the only world he'd known, and university is a culture shock.  He hadn't realised that girls studied law and doesn't know where to look if they've got bare arms. He modifies his dress and behaviour in an attempt to fit in when he's on campus but he still clings tightly to his traditions on his home turf. When we meet the Zilbermans we know that Avromi is a cause for concern, but it takes us quite a while to find out why.

There is a myriad of other characters in the novel, which conveys the sense of family and community very well. The physical descriptions of people and places are very evocative. By the time I reached the chapter concerning Chani and Baruch's wedding night, I was feeling like a voyeur... and it made me late for work.  The author uses a lot of Yiddish words and phrases -there is a glossary, but being a kindle user I pretty much made do without it and found that most words could be understood from the context in which they were used.

This book is on the longlist for this year's Man Booker prize, which means it's going to be read and scrutinised pretty thoroughly; so are there weaknesses?  There are very few in my opinion. One thing I did notice was that although the descriptions of the characters' thoughts and appearances are excellent, on a couple of occasions the descriptions of characters' physical actions seem weaker in comparison. Beyond that I'd have to resort to picking on minor editorial issues such as the use of 'tow the line' instead of 'toe the line' which is a bit below the belt as criticism really.

I enjoyed the book very much and I thoroughly recommend it.  I'm not going to make predictions about its success with the awards because I'm always wrong, but this author is definitely one I'll be keeping an eye out for in the future.

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