Perfectly Miserable: Guilt, God and Real Estate in a Small Town, by Sarah Payne Stuart
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Perfectly Miserable: Guilt, God and Real Estate in a Small Town, by Sarah Payne Stuart
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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.
Perfectly Miserable: Guilt, God and Real Estate in a Small Town, by Sarah Payne Stuart- Amazon Sales Rank: #304385 in Books
- Brand: Stuart, Sarah Payne
- Published on: 2015-06-02
- Released on: 2015-06-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.26" h x .66" w x 5.44" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
From Booklist When one grows up in a town haunted by the ghosts of Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau, it’s hard not to feel that one is always held to a slightly higher set of standards. And when one’s mother is related to both the poet Robert Lowell and the novelist Cleveland Amory, it’s nearly impossible to believe that one could ever achieve sufficient success. So when Stuart decides to uproot her family to return to her hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, to re-create for her children the idyllic childhood she only imagined she experienced, she finds that the town’s legacy of mothers both real and fictional make the task harder than she bargained for. In a charming memoir that combines the disarming honesty of personal narrative with the scholarly acumen of a literary historian, Stuart delves into the story of Alcott’s beloved “Marmee” as well as her own mother’s tumultuous past in order to confront the ever-confounding relationship between mothers and daughters and the never-ending quest for family approval. --Carol Haggas
Review
"The book is a love letter to the author’s family, her fellow ‘old-moneyed Yankees’ and even to herself. . . . It’s on contemporary Concord that Stuart is at her best. . . . The real action in the book is the deployment of Stuart’s fantastic knowledge of this subculture for comic delight.”—The New York Times Book Review“For all WASP’s—or anyone who likes to laugh at them. Perfectly hilarious.”—Town and Country"Witty, acerbic . . . hilariously sarcastic.”—Wall Street Journal“Stuart learns, as most of us do, that one can never return to the past or make it anew…attempts to reshape the past do, however, demonstrate the tonic value of humor.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune"A prodigal WASP daughter returns to her New England roots in Sarah Payne Stuart’s Perfectly Miserable: Guilt, God and Real Estate in a Small Town, filled with laughs as long and wince-inducing as a snowbound Concord winter."—Vogue.com“Stuart writes honestly and lovingly about her aging parents, her childhood, money, the trials of parenthood and keeping her marriage afloat. In other words, everything. Perfectly Miserable is a gorgeously rendered portrait of modern life—and a reminder that some things never change.”—BookPage"As an exiled New Englander still obsessed with Thoreau’s weird little life, I devoured Stuart’s memoir of returning to her hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, a place still laden with the ghosts of childhood past: from her family, to the Transcendentalists, there’s a lot of weight there, and Stuart writes it all out in funny, wry prose."—Flavorwire"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 view)"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
Praise for Perfectly Miserable“A love letter . . . The real action in the book is the deployment of Stuart’s fantastic knowledge of this subculture for comic delight.” —The New York Times Book Review“For all WASP’s—or anyone who likes to laugh at them. Perfectly hilarious.” —Town & Country“Witty, acerbic . . . hilariously sarcastic.” —The Wall Street Journal“Wickedly droll . . . Satire at its finest.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
About the Author 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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Most helpful customer reviews
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful. Written so well I spent the whole book wanting to yell at the author By Suzanne Amara I can't think of a book I've read recently that so much made me want to yell at the author. I wanted to say "Move on! Don't spend your whole life obsessed with your mother!" I wanted to say "Don't just accept that your sons are going to follow the wild path your brothers did!" and I wanted to say "Get over that house on the hill you could never afford in the first place!" That's a sign of writing that engages you---you interact with it that way in your head.The basic theme of this book, for me, is summed up when the author says her parents were old money after the money was long gone. This book, at the core, is about money---how the old New England rich families live as if they are poor, skimping always except on education and vacations. It's about how you can see the flaws in that life but still aspire to it. I so often was brought to thinking about my grandmother, who was brought up in that kind of environment and kept a bit of it all her life. It's about towns like Concord, the setting here, which are full of people who could buy and sell you, but who, like the author's money, have a strict budget of 50 dollars per grandchild and like her mother did, will buy the cassette player but not the tape to go in it as a present if it puts them over that budget. It's a very distinct kind of person, the type who has falling apart historic houses with shaggy dogs and old couches who then send their children to Harvard without scholarships.Mixed in so well to the story of the author's life is a lot of history of the authors of Concord---Alcott, Emerson, Hawthrone and Thoreau. It's a personal kind of history, mostly about the houses they lived in and their family dynamics, and it's very interesting stuff. It's mixed in so well that it never feels like a history lesson, but almost like part of the author's own life.This is a book that will probably drive you crazy in a lot of ways, but you'll be glad you read it.
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful. A Familiar Story By AntKathy I received "Perfectly Miserable" as an ARC giveaway. The following review is my own opinion.While Sarah Payne Stuart makes a case for New England Yankee culture, I was not all that convinced that these neurotics are exclusive to Concord, MA. Much of the behavior and beliefs of the "older" generation is typical to all Depression-era adults. Likewise, the spendthrift ways of Sarah's generation (fifty-ish) is typical of those who experienced the economics of the eighties when they were "DINKS" and "Yuppies". Frankly, the so-called Puritan/Protestant ethic that Stuart believes is unique to her hometown is still running riot in Berryville, Arkansas, Kennewick, WA, Omaha, NE and Menifee, CA.The history of the town and the literary figures who inhabited it generations ago were interesting, and when she wasn't whining too loudly, Stuart's writing style was entertaining, but really, much of the US is "Perfectly Miserable" nowadays.
28 of 34 people found the following review helpful. Not Exactly Miserable . . . . By SundayAtDusk This is the type of book where you feel one way while reading it, another way while finishing it, and a third way after thinking about it for a few days. While reading it, I mostly enjoyed this half memoir, half analysis of life in Concord, Massachusetts. If you are looking for a lot of details in the memoir parts, though, you will not find them. Many family situations are brought up, but few or no details are given. I had no problem with that, since the story was mostly focused on the common characteristics of those in Concord, past and present.By the end of the book, however, my reading enjoyment was depleted. I was simply tired of reading about the author's family life, and about the long gone literary characters she discussed throughout the entire story, such as the Alcotts of Little Women (Bantam Classics) fame. I think the book went on too long. Not too, too long, but too long enough to leave me a happy reader on the last page.After thinking about the book for a few days, my feelings became even more negative. The book left me with a sense of emptiness. There is no other way to describe it. It lacked soul. In the beginning, Sarah Payne Stuart moves back to her hometown of Concord, supposedly to raise her children in a wonderful environment. In the end, she states she has had enough, there was nothing left for her there, it was time to go once and for all. Goodbye, Concord. She had her book. This unfortunately made her come across like a bit of a self-centered user. Someone detached from it all in a way that she was mostly an observer, not a real participant in school or church or community events. She was more interested in houses and property, than in friends and neighbors. She was more interested in the dead literary characters of Concord, than the contemporary living characters in Concord. Sure, her parents and her children were a high priority, but all of that, too, was mostly about what she wanted and needed.Perfectly Miserable: Guilt, God and Real Estate in a Small Town was indeed insightful about life in Concord, past and present. It was also insightful about mothering, relationships with mothers, and women in general. Read it for all of those things. Maybe at the end, you will be perfectly happy or perfectly miserable or, like me, somewhere between happiness and miserableness.
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