Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal [Hardcover]

Julie Metz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 9, 2009

"Heart-wrenching but triumphant."
--Glamour

"A lyrical, haunting, and utterly gripping memoir."
--Redbook

"A dark, evocative memoir from a woman forced to come to terms with her husband's death and the revelation of his infidelity."
--Shelf Awareness

"A fascinating memoir."
--People

"A delectable summer read."
--USA Today

"She brings refreshing candor to a startling, painful tale."
--New York Times

"A riveting memoir."
--Real Simple

"...lyrical, moving prose."
--Working Mother

"Metz's Perfection chronicles with lapidary precision one woman's 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, but Ms. Metz is much the stronger for having survived to recount it."
--Julie Powell, author of Julie & Julia

"Julie Metz's memoir of how her marriage unraveled after her mate's death is piercingly honest, haunting, and heartbreaking. Anyone who has ever been in a bad relationship will over-identify."
--Susan Shapiro, author of Five Men Who Broke My Heart and Lighting Up

"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 A Widow's Walk

"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 The Doctor's Daughter and Hearts

Julie Metz's life changes forever on one ordinary January afternoon when her husband, Henry, collapses on the kitchen floor and dies in her arms. Suddenly, this mother of a six-year-old is the young widow in a bucolic small town. And this is only the beginning. Seven months after Henry's death, just when Julie thinks she is emerging from the worst of it, comes the rest of it: She discovers that what had appeared to be the reality of her marriage was but a half-truth. Henry had hidden another life from her.

"He loved you so much." That's what everyone keeps telling her. It's true that he loved Julie and their six-year-old daughter ebulliently and devotedly, but as she starts to pick up the pieces and rebuild her life without Henry in it, she learns that Henry had been unfaithful throughout their twelve years of marriage. The most damaging affair was ongoing--a tumultuous relationship that ended only with Henry's death. For Julie, the only thing to do was to get at the real truth--to strip away the veneer of "perfection" that was her life and confront each of the women beneath the veneer.

Perfection is the story of Julie Metz's journey through chaos and transformation as she creates a different life for herself and her young daughter. It is the story of coming to terms with painful truths, of rebuilding both a life and an identity after betrayal and widowhood. It is a story of rebirth and happiness--if not perfection.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As recounted in this dark and affecting memoir, Metz's discovery of her husband's long trail of philandering well after he died reveals the state of willful ignorance and comfortable self-deception that reigned in her marriage. At their home in the northern suburbs of New York City on June 8, 2003, Henry, her husband of 13 years, suffered sudden cardiac arrest, leaving the author, a 44-year-old graphic artist, widowed and the sole caretaker of their six-year-old daughter, Liza. Initially unable to face the details surrounding his death, she left to her friends the task of cleaning out her dead husband's office, though those same well-meaning people hid from her the truth they gleaned from Henry's computer files and correspondence: he had been enjoying a two-year affair with another woman in their town, as well as numerous other dalliances. Metz, after the shock of Henry's death, found solace in shopping and flirting with a much younger artist, Tomas, who was also friendly with Henry; once Tomas intimated that Henry had another life, the author began digging, calling and e-mailing every woman she learned had had a relationship with her husband, obsessed with finding the truth. Metz's road to emotional honesty proves cautionary and trying. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Julie Metz is a graphic designer, artist, and freelance writer whose essays have appeared in publications including Glamour and Hemispheres magazines, and the online story site mrbellersneighborhood.com. The recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, she lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her daughter and partner.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Voice; Complete Numbers Starting with 1, 1st Ed edition (June 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401322557
• ISBN-13: 978-1401322557
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (166 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #542,226 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Julie Metz is a graphic designer, artist, and freelance writer whose essays have appeared in publications including Glamour and Hemispheres magazines, and the online story site mrbellersneighborhood.com. The recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, she lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her daughter and partner.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Open honest tale of heartbreak, May 12, 2009

By 

Ashley Lee (DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal (Hardcover)

Whew, what is there to say about this memoir? It drained my emotions several times, and I mean that in a good way. Ms. Metz poured her heart out here, and it was hardly for naught.

Julie Metz is in her office when she hears a heavy thud. Continuing her work, she doesn't think much of it. Then all of a sudden, her mind rewinds and she itemizes all of the things it wasn't. She runs into the kitchen and finds her husband Henry on the floor. She calls 911 and breathes into him, but he cannot be saved. Over the course of the next few days, her house becomes a parking lot for friends and family to aid her and her 7 year old daughter Liza. She hears a woman in Henry's office shriek shrilly but doesn't think much of it, as immersed in her grief as she is. Yet it comes back to her later. Going through the motions of returning to her schedule for her daughter's sake, Julie can't eat, she isn't sleeping well and she's being visited by Henry's spirit.

Six months later, a friend of both Julie and Henry tells her that Henry was unfaithful. This revelation understandably cuts to the core, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. There wasn't one liaison, there were several. As there were several women. When Julie finds out just how close to home his betrayals came, her bite is sharp. As she digs through the evidence of infidelities of the man she thought she knew and gave herself wholly to, there is much fury, pain, and most surprisingly, a curiosity that seeks to understand and almost forgive him these slaps in the face from him. It's almost like she stepped out of the pain and hurt she felt to try to understand a reason for this need of his and forgive, in such a way that shows how lucky he was to have her and what a mistake he made in seeking solace and comfort elsewhere.

The third section of the book shows Julie trying to pick up and put back together the pieces of her life, delving into dating again. The shock of the new way of dating (ahem: Match.com) is shocking to her as she met Henry in 1986, and was married to him until 2003. The trials and tribulations of her dating explorations are something many of us may have felt if we've ever gone the path of words and email before an official meeting.

The memoir is heavy, no doubt about that. There won't be many laughs reading it, but there's not a bitter tinge to it you might expect from a topic like this. You root for her because she's genuinely likable and honest about herself, her shortcomings and flaws, and her better attributes. Ms. Metz was not throwing herself a pity party in writing her tale. I can only imagine and hope this was a cathartic therapy session for Ms. Metz

41 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Title Says It All, May 11, 2009

By 

Frodo Gamgee - See all my reviews

This review is from: Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal (Hardcover)

Anyone who has ever had their heart broken over a spouse's extramarital affair must read this book. You think you had it bad? Julie Metz couldn't even confront her husband about his affairs, because she didn't find out about them until six months after he passed away in front of her eyes. She eschews the normal internal struggle to find a sense of closure and instead makes the process external, by tracking down each of the women he had been carrying on with in order to confront them. The resulting story is a heart-wrenching but beautifully told journey into a second phase of life that everyone should be lucky enough to find.

72 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Self-Indulgent at Best, Pathological at Worst, July 6, 2009

By 

All-access Customer "Amazon Addict" (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal (Hardcover)

I bought Julie Metz's "Perfection" expecting to be appalled on her behalf. Instead, I found myself appalled by her.

I cannot believe that Ms. Metz would dedicate a book detailing every failing of her late husband and their complete sexual histories to their daughter. Ms. Metz, I assure you that you daughter does not want or need to know that you "creamed" your panties on your wedding day.

What I found equally appalling was the fact that her daughter played such a peripheral role in the book, much of which focused on Ms. Metz's love life. While it could be that she was more concerned with her daughter's adjustment after the loss of her father than this book would indicate, I cannot help but believe that both Ms. Metz's actions and her retelling reflect her warped sense of priorities. Were Ms. Metz not so concerned (I would say overly so) with receiving male attention, she might not have ended by married to and staying with an adulterous husband.

I was also uncomfortable with the fact that she had no problem publishing the diagnostic labels applied to her late husband and his mistress by his psychiatrist, but seemingly gave insufficient thought to how she contributed to the situation she found herself in and how she might prevent herself from getting into a similar situation in the future. As a sidenote, what kind of psychiatrist would release this type of information about her former patient (a likely ethical violation)? The same type, I suppose, who would feel comfortable applying a diagnostic label to someone (Cathy) she had never met and about whom she had only heard from her narcissistic patient.

I was also appalled that Ms. Metz chose to include (i.e., exploit) an anecdote in which her daughter grapples with mixed feelings (i.e., the fact that her father was sometimes mean and yelled at her) after her father's death. I found it equally insensitive that Ms. Metz chose to include her husband's psychiatrist's theory that his mother's behavior had led him to become a narcissist.

Finally, the second half of the book does not present a coherent, compelling story. While every interaction that Ms. Metz has with a male may have great significance for her, it does not for the reader.

For their daughter's sake, I wish Ms. Metz and her husband had both worked harder in therapy.