The opening scene in Hanna Rosin’s 2010 Atlantic essay, “The End of Men,” may one day be as iconic as the beginning of Betty Friedan’s 1963 seminal work, “The Feminine Mystique.” Friedan’s book famously opened with a scene of a typical mid-century housewife.

The summer house in Lenox, Massachusetts where Joshua Henkin’s accomplished new novel is set has a tennis court out back, a garden, and, on its interior walls, street maps of Paris, Kathe Kollwitz etchings and faded portraits of great-grandparents. Family history also spills out of closets, with sports equipment of earlier eras, a never-worn wedding dress (the engagement was broken), outgrown sneakers and spare flip-flops.