Perfectly Miserable
Guilt, God and Real Estate in a Small Town
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3.7 • 10 Ratings
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
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 was
forced 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A follow-up to Stuart's previous family memoir, My First Cousin Once Removed, this evenhanded work takes aim at her double-edged WASP childhood in Concord, Mass. where she and her documentary-producer husband moved back to raise their three young children. Living again among the God-fearing, hard-working, parsimonious descendants of the early Puritan settlers her mother's old money clan Stuart felt comfortingly part of the Elect, yet also deeply conflicted. Concord was the storied seat of the Transcendentalists, artists and deep thinkers like Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and the Bronson Alcott family, especially daughter Louisa May Alcott whose novel Little Women deeply informed Stuart's childhood. Guilt hovers over much of Stuart's sense of her childhood, involving her mother's depressive episodes and early breakdown, and her own desire to win her mother's approval, which she finally did by buying a house (well beyond their means) on Nashawtuc Hill "I had known that I was too weak to resist the cozy beauty of the hill," she admits, "and the terrible lure of its desirability." Skillfully, Stuart buttresses her own family's neuroses with those of Thoreau or the Alcotts for a hilariously bracing and honest look at generational mayhem and triumph.
Customer Reviews
A neurotic romp through Concord
This book sheds new light on living in Concord, Ma. The author is witty and entertaining. I enjoyed this book.
Perfectly Miserable by Sarah Payne Stuart
Riveting. I don’t want to overstate praise for this book, but, this book is possibly a great “American character” piece of writing that simultaneously deconstructs the dangerous myth building history we all believe about those know it all puritans, deconstructs our paralyzing fear and worship of monied privilege and places the American steady diet and ignorance of intergenerational narcissism in bold relief. Reveals the actual lives of those “little women” in Little Women, and other sight seeing topics in New England like Thoreau, Walden’s Pond, Emerson, etc. This is a light laugh out loud book, or, in the case of deeper understanding of American national character, admirable classic American writing about the dangerous actually impossible to heal completely, intergenerational narcissism that freezes our politics today and debunks our mistaken perception that we ‘know it all” and if others in the world are not in sync, they are simply wrong and need to be fixed. A page turner that rattles one’s entire psyche. The answer for Stuart lies in New York, a metaphor for what we could be if we would all get over our “specialness.” Mother-daughter intergenerational narcissism cycle beautifully and tragically laid out, especially in the last quiet understated gut wrenching pages. Only the reader who is completely mentally healthy or in denial of our shared American impulses will not find the last pages putting the fear of our shared future out there if we don’t change our “me” into “we.” Great book. Must read for High Schools as a “what’s going on here really” text. If Harvard wants to use this for “elite” awareness orientation, good choice. Good historical information.