What can you do when you find out your dead husband has cheated on you? There really isn’t much time for revenge and you can’t really try out new therapy to teach him to keep it in his pants. Couple counseling is also out of the question. In “Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal”,  Julie Metz learns that her husband was having a series of intense affairs in the years preceding his unexpected death.

In a somewhat surprising move, Julie decides to call each and every one of her husband Henry's girlfriends to piece everything together and learn the truth about the man she was married to.  To me, this was strangely remniscent of the Jim Jarmusch film where Bill Murray’s character traces all of his ex-girlfriends; however, in Julia’s case, Henry’s ex-girlfriends are much more receptive to her surprise phone calls than she had any reason to expect.

Portions of the book are less interesting, including her “dating” experiences after the death of her husband. For some reason, her recollections of her date experiences don’t come to life on the page in the same way as her unusual relationships with her dead husband’s mistresses. The notable exception is her first relationship after Henry’s death with a much-younger man from their small circle of friends.  Her husband, who definitely had a few too many relationships (they did not have an open marriage), at least had fairly interesting and diverse taste in women.

Another interesting passage in the book is when she reflects on some of the literature that was in her husband’s possession. One quote from the 1970’s  “Pair-Bonds, Marriage, and the Loss of Estrus” does not exactly extoll the virtues of marriage:

“marriage is not in essence a sexually based behavioral association between a male and female, but rather an economic and child-rearing partnership., embedded in networks of kin and entailing sexual rights and duties.”

This insight forces Julie to view her own past with Henry a little bit in this way.  As many women would do, she worries that her own over-attention in her role as a mother and a different sort of wife might have contributed to Henry’s lack of fidelity.  She even calls the author of that book to get some clarification both on his own views on marriage and what she thinks about her own.