Object: Matrimony isn’t really long enough for a review, but I do want to point people towards it, because it’s adorable. So, instead of a review, here’s a very brief excerpt:
“After all, Margolius,” Feigenbaum commented as he lit an all-tobacco cigarette on their way down the front stoop of the Goldblatt residence—”after all, she ain’t such a bad-looking woman. I seen it lots worser, Margolius.”
“That’s nothing what we got it this evening,” Philip said as they started off for the subway; “you should taste the Kreploch what that girl makes it.”
“I’m going to,” Feigenbaum said; “they asked me I should come to dinner to-morrow night.”
But Philip knew from his own experience that the glamour engendered of Fannie’s gefüllte Fische would soon be dispelled, and then Henry Feigenbaum would hie him to the northern-tier counties of Pennsylvania, leaving Philip’s love affair in worse condition than before.
Philip is the protagonist, who’s got a bit of a Taming of the Shrew situation on his hands, and is trying to set his friend Feigenbaum up with Fannie Goldblatt so that he can marry her sister Birdie. Fannie’s temper isn’t a problem — she’s just really unattractive. But her cooking maybe makes up for it.
The draw here isn’t the story, but the turn of the century New York Jewish characters. It’s the speech patterns and the bits of Yiddish that had me passing my kindle down our row of airplane seats and making my mother and brother read the good bits.
Redeeming Qualities 