Overview

A wryly comic memoir that examines the pillars of New England WASP culture class, history, family, money, envy, perfection, and, of course, real estate through the lens of mothers and daughters. At eighteen, Sarah Payne Stuart fled her mother and all the other disapproving mothers of her too perfect hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, only to return years later when she had children of her own. Whether to defy the previous generation or finally earn their approval and enter their ranks, she hurled herself into upper-crust domesticity full throttle. In the twenty years Stuart spent back in her hometown in a series of ever more magnificent houses in ever grander neighborhoods she wasforced to connect with the cultural tradition of guilt and flawed parenting of a long legacy of local, literary women from Emerson s wife, to Hawthorne s, to the most famous and imposing of them all, Louisa May Alcott s iconic, guilt-tripping Marmee. When Stuart s own mother dies, she realizes that there is no one left to approve or disapprove. And so, with her suddenly grown children fleeing as she herself once did, Stuart leaves her hometown for the final time, bidding good-bye to the cozy ideals invented for her by Louisa May Alcott so many years ago, which may or may not ever have been based in reality.

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9781594631818

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Reviews

This is a true story wonderfully told, infused with place and history, with wit and warmth toward all those it satirizes. To call it funny seems inadequate. There is a depth of understanding in its humor; it is funniest when it deals in sadness. I can't remember the last time I read a book I liked as much. --Tracy Kidder, Pulizer Prize and National Book Award winning author of Home Town and House A warmly wise and elegantly funny memoir for all of us tormented by class, money, the mis-remembrance of things past, and real estate. This book is for anyone who has ever felt guilty, lived in a house, or had parents. If you don't love Perfectly Miserable, text me for your money back. --Patricia Marx, author of Him Her Him Again The End of Him Perfectly Miserable is an acidic, hilarious, and monumentally self-deprecating account of its author's doomed love affair with the world's quaintest town. -- Boston Magazine

A writer's wickedly droll account of how she came to terms with her WASP heritage and the impossible expectations of 'mother' New England. . . . In this wry memoir, the author explores her relationship with her hometown and with a whole host of Concord notables, from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathanial Hawthorne to Louisa May Alcott, whose fictional mother Marmee--and the perpetually miserable Alcott matriarch on whom she was based--represents everything good and bad about New England culture. . . . Satire at its finest. -- Kirkus (starred review) This is a true story wonderfully told, infused with place and history, with wit and warmth toward all those it satirizes. To call it funny seems inadequate. There is a depth of understanding in its humor; it is funniest when it deals in sadness. I can't remember the last time I read a book I liked as much. --Tracy Kidder, Pulizer Prize and National Book Award winning author of Home Town and House A warmly wise and elegantly funny memoir for all of us tormented by class, money, the mis-remembrance of things past, and real estate. This book is for anyone who has ever felt guilty, lived in a house, or had parents. If you don't love Perfectly Miserable, text me for your money back. --Patricia Marx, author of Him Her Him Again The End of Him Perfectly Miserable is an acidic, hilarious, and monumentally self-deprecating account of its author's doomed love affair with the world's quaintest town. -- Boston Magazine

Author Information

Sarah Payne Stuart has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Book Review. She divides her time between Maine and New York..

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