The Soulmate: A Novel

In the Acknowledgements that follow the novel, Hepworth shares that she began The Soulmate during the COVID-19 pandemic, inspired by conversations she had with friends about marriage as the pandemic put relationships under a new kind of strain. They discussed “the bad and good sides of marriage. What we bring to it. What it brings out in us” (325). Hepworth uses Pippa’s and Amanda’s marriages to explore what the different women value and need in their marriages. Their marriages couldn’t be more different on the surface—Amanda’s marriage is what she calls “an arrangement,” while Pippa’s marriage is based on an ideal of romantic love. The novel shows that both women will come to accept that their models of marriage are illusory in different ways. The novel suggests that loyalty is fundamental to a successful marriage: Both women’s marriage stories uphold their belief in the importance of loyalty, showing it to be present in Amanda’s but not in Pippa’s. This irony is key to the parallel created by these two marriages and to the novel’s subversion of expectations around which is the stronger.

The novel creates an unconventional marriage model in Amanda and Max’s relationship. Amanda has specifically designed and lived her marriage to avoid being like her mother.