PERFECTION: REVIEW AND BONUS ENTRIES

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PERFECTION
BY JULIE METZ

MORE ABOUT THE BOOK AND AUTHOR:

PRAISE FOR PERFECTION:

"When I read Julie Metz’s PERFECTION, I inhaled every word! I loved it, not just for the raw facts of Julie’s ordeal but even more for the lyrical, insightful point of view from which it was written. Julie writes close to the bone as she searches for meaning and embraces the beauty of an imperfect life." —Sarah Landis, Editor

"Her honesty about middle-aged sex and her fear of never finding the "new" right someone make this a delectable summer read."
—Carol Memmott, USA TODAY

"Metz gives us Joan Didion's THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING with the reality-check of Nora Ephron's HEARTBURN. An enthralling, heart-pounding, unforgettable read." 
—Jennifer Belle, author of High Maintenance and Little Stalker

"PERFECTION is a nuanced, spellbinding portrait of an extraordinarily complex marriage. Julie Metz has written a literary page-turner that is at once entertaining and moving."
—Hilary Black, wowowow.com

"It is impossible to put PERFECTION down as we follow Julie Metz through her true story of love, lies, loss, and moving forward. Her raw and brave writing makes you want to cheer Metz on as she pieces her life back together, one beautiful sentence at a time."
—Marian Fontana, author of Widow’s Walk and Middle of the Bed

 
"Six months after her husband's funeral, Julie Metz discovered his five mistresses, one of them her presumed friend. She writes, "I couldn’t kill Henry anymore, since he was, conveniently enough, dead.” The seed of PERFECTION was rage, yet Metz’s fury is not ugly, not even vengeful. Instead it provides this book’s beautiful testimony that, instead of killing the subject, the author can do something that diminishes him even more totally. She can forgive him and move on. That accomplishment, via prose, leaves me breathless."
—Sarah Manguso, author of The Two Kinds of Decay

"This aching memoir of love, loss, and deception is candid and compelling. I found myself rooting for Julie Metz in her search for a happy “second life."
—Hilma Wolitzer, author of Summer Reading and Hearts

"Julie Metz’s PERFECTION chronicles with lapidary precision one woman’s arduous climb back to happiness after not just a spouse’s death, but also the shocking recognition that her life before that death was not what she had thought it was. The journey is a painful one, and long, but Ms. Metz is much the stronger for having survived to recount it."
—Julie Powell, author of Julie and Julia

MY REVIEW:

When 44 year old Henry died one morning in his wife’s arms from a pulmonary embolism, little did she, Julie Metz, know what all would follow.  Nor would any other woman, you say, but in Julie Metz’s case, the stages of grief were quite different than the norm as she tells in her memoir, PERFECTION: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal”. Married for 12 years, with Liza, their six year old daughter who was the center of their world, Henry and Julie were writers who were living in the same house but were at a point in life where they weren’t living their lives “together” as Julie would soon discover following Henry’s death.

Over the course of the next seven months, Julie finds herself living as a single mother with a daughter to raise and a heart to mend after losing the love of her life so suddenly. But Julie lives in a small town and before long, she is told by a friend that Henry had been seeing someone and of course, Julie’s first thought was one of disbelief.  However, the more Julie learns, the more emails emerge, the more people confess, the more she finds out that her husband was not the man she even thought she knew and loved. Not only did he have affairs with at least five women, but one was even a very good friend of theirs. Julie’s life unwinds in a way one, especially Julie, could never contemplate. With friends’ help, Julie is able to find out the details and actually gets to know most of these other women. She finds herself knowing Henry’s lovers while not even sure she knew Henry, the husband she is grieving over. One of the women in particular helps Julie to understand a little more about the man she was married to and how he felt about their marriage, as well as Julie herself.

With this information slowly sinking in, Julie is able to slowly begin to forgive Henry and build her life all over again for herself as well as her daughter. Their lives are forever changed but they also are able to have a new beginning and move on from there.  PERFECTION is indeed a very brave and honest memoir for Julie Metz to not only write but to have to live through, and then to turn around and share it with the world in this book. She also is eventually able to find promise with a new partner and release herself from the past, and begin to appreciate the present for all that it is.

  

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BONUS ENTRIES
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