Memoir; author's husband dies, she discovers he's had affairs with several women, she seeks to "understand why" by discussing with most of these women their relationship with her husband. I almost gave up reading this in the first part of the book because these people come across so incredibly unsympathetically. They both appear to be unkind, self-centered, conceited, privileged, and superficial. She is very high strung, always breaking out into tears and screaming rages about something or other. I could not identify with either of them at all, and was not finding much of value in spending my time reading about them.

Then finally the book hit the part where the husband's affairs were revealed to her, and the resulting drama did keep me reading, though I did not feel glad about that choice when I finished the book.

Towards the end of the book, Metz shares with the reader such unprofound conclusions as "Men and women can't live with each other easily, but we must live together, otherwise we'll all die out." Gad.
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It was interesting to read a memoir right after I finished Natalie Goldberg's book on memoir writing but .... I have to say I wasn't crazy about this book even though I read it very quickly. Just got tired of the author's vindictiveness. ( )

Vacuous and superficial and self-indulgent to the extreme. I had to force myself to read the last hundred pages, which was essentially a laundry list of the men she slept with in the year after her husband's death. Although Metz described her husband, Henry, as a narcissist, I did not buy it. There is a difference between extreme infidelity and narcissistic abuse. She does not give the impression that she ever even loved Henry or mourned his passing before learning of his infidelities. She wrote about wanting to sleep with another man before she managed to eek out a few lackluster paragraphs about Henry's passing. Worst of all, I never even felt that she even was capable of loving her only daughter. Julie Metz is the narcissist here. ( )

Following Julie's devastating and disheartening journey filled my heart with remorse. I can tell that Julie is the type of person that once she puts her mind to something, she follows it through until the end. I have great admiration for her as she seeks for that closure that she needed in order to move on in her life. I never really understood the correlation between the title of the book and the book itself. I didn't infer the idea of "perfection" or the pursuit of perfection in her writings. There were times that I didn't really understand what the significance of certain instances in the book were, as they didn't seem to fit into the overall flow, but overall I felt many emotions following her journey. And the claw ring...I have no words.

On a side note, Julie has inspired me to learn more about the psychology of human behavior and sexuality and read Dr. Symon's published writings. I found this very intriguing. ( )

What a whiney rant! I understand being upset with the information that she found out about her husband after his death, but that it took up the entire book was just over the top. ( )