Please Excuse My Daughter [Paperback]

Julie Klam (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 7, 2009

A woman's hilarious, bittersweet account of growing up in a family of career-shunning, dependence-seeking women and her journey to a state of twenty-first-century self-reliance.

Julie Klam was raised as the only daughter of a Jewish family in the exclusive WASP stronghold of Bedford, New York. Her mother was sharp, glamorous, and funny, but did not think that work was a woman's responsibility. Her father was fully supportive, not just of his wife's staying at home, but also of her extravagant lifestyle. Her mother's offbeat parenting style-taking Julie out of school to go to lunch at Bloomingdale's, for example-made her feel well-cared-for (and well-dressed) but left her unprepared for graduating and entering the real world. She had been brought up to look pretty and wait for a rich man to sweep her off her feet. But what happened if he never showed up?

When Julie gets married to a hardworking but not wealthy man-one who expects her to be part of a modern couple and contribute financially to the marriage-she realizes how ambivalent and ill-equipped she is for life. Once she gives birth to a daughter, she knows she must grow up, get to work, and teach her child the self-reliance that she never learned.

Delivered in an uproariously funny, sweet, self-effacing, and utterly memorable voice, Please Excuse My Daughter is a bighearted memoir from an irresistible new writer.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her debut memoir, Klam chronicles the clash between her privileged upbringing and the real-world problems she faced as an adult. Growing up as the princess in a 1970s Bedford, N.Y., house with two brothers, Klam recounts her childhood as a series of shopping trips with her extravagant mother, often at the expense of her education. With her parents as an emotional and financial safety net, Klam's transition from coddled child to independent woman is anything but smooth. She falls in love with film at New York University, but spends several aimless years trying halfheartedly to find a job in her field. Her life takes a turn for the better when she lands a job writing pop-up videos for VH1 and eventually marries the show's producer, Paul Leo. When a series of health and financial problems rock the couple's relationship, Klam struggles to find her footing in a world where her actions have real consequences. The reader desperately wants to identify with Klam, but while her hardships are real and often heartbreaking (with flashes of sardonic wit), the voice is too infused with self-pity to earn empathy. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Fortysomething Klam’s debut memoir is alternately funny, touching, and tiresome. A quintessential Jewish American princess raised in a wealthy Westchester County household, Klam is ill-equipped to cope in a world where growing numbers of women are gainfully employed. Her mother, who spends her days sunning, gossiping, and shopping, would have been perfectly happy to have her daughter snag a rich husband and settle down. Klam manages to land a couple of plum gigs: as an intern on the Late Show with David Letterman and as an assistant on the VH-1 television show, Pop-up Video. At the latter, she falls instantly in love with Paul, the show’s producer (and her boss), whom she eventually marries but not before she has an abortion, Paul is diagnosed with diabetes, and terrorists attack New York. Writers like Karen Karbo (The Stuff of Life, 2003) and Dani Shapiro (Slow Motion, 1998) have set the memoir bar very high, and in comparison Klam’s musings seem decidedly mild. Still, it has its moments. Her account of a search for a wedding dress is likely to make all but the girliest girls wince. --Allison Block --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade; Reprint edition (April 7, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594483574
• ISBN-13: 978-1594483578
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,008,368 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Julie Klam grew up in Bedford, New York. After attending NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and interning at Late Night with David Letterman, she went on to write for such publications as O: The Oprah Magazine, Rolling Stone, Harper's Bazaar, Glamour, Redbook, Family Circle, and The New York Times Magazine and for the VH1 television show Pop-Up Video, where she earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Special Class Writing. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, daughter, and many dogs.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lucky us: Julie Klam missed the memo on self-sufficiency and had to learn the hard, funny way, April 16, 2008

By 

Jesse Kornbluth "Head Butler" (New York) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Please Excuse My Daughter (Hardcover)

"A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

That was Samuel Johnson, writing in the unthinkingly chauvinist 1700s.

If he were writing now, he'd be noting the rash of memoirs by women, especially ones that try for humor. Because there's money in funny, and publishers and writers know it --- why else would a writer as talented and sophisticated writer as Nora Ephron feel bad about her.....neck?

Ms. Ephron condescends. Julie Klam, in contrast, is genuinely funny. The difference is not in the writing; both women are deft storytellers. It's in the truth of the tale, the sense that the events described actually happened even though they are crazy and wrong and life ain't supposed to be like that.

In other words, I buy Julie Klam's premise.

That premise is simple: She's a Princess, not born but bred. Her father has achieved a house in Bedford (the Westchester town that is the weekend home to Ralph Lauren, Martha Stewart and a legion of WASPs) that comes with many acres and the appropriate assortment of animals. But Dad's busy. She's her mother's daughter. And her mother, no feminist, spends her time reading, yakking on the phone and shopping.

Does Mom care that Julie is flunking everything?

Me: "Wow, Jenny Doe is doing really well. She's a Rhodes Scholar, studying theoretical mathematics and counterterrorism and is very close to discovering the cure for cancer."

My Mother: "Yeah, but she has those hairy arms."

Julie drifts and stumbles through school. She applies to 26 colleges. She gets into two. After a year of actual study, she transfers to the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, where she majors in film, has me for a teacher and escapes without visible scars. She interns for David Letterman. Life's good.

And then she hits the wall.

In movies, a young woman goes to a job interview and says, "I'm not afraid of hard work."

Julie Klam's truth: "I wasn't afraid of hard work. I just didn't want to do it."

As we have seen, Julie is not lazy. She just hasn't been raised with a work ethic. And they don't seem to stock them at Bloomingdale's.

Humor requires pratfalls and reversals. Once it's in gear, Please Excuse My Daughter has more than you'd expect. Bad jobs. Taking money from Dad. (When the American Express clerk asks Julie's occupation, her father says "Parasite" and only after a beat adds, "Like from Paris.") Working for Dad as a service clerk in his insurance business --- for six years. And there's the obligatory bad boyfriend, only in her case, he's a sociopath and an ex-con.

And then, the big break. She gets a job as a writer for VH1's "Pop-Up Video." And an even bigger break: She nabs the boss as a boyfriend. This leads, of course, to her firing. Along the way: an abortion, her boyfriend's diabetes, Rod Stewart walking through the rented beach house. (Yes. Rod Stewart.)

Marriage? Paul isn't ready. But Julie is patient. In her way: "Some days I'd sit at my desk and send Paul e-mails that said, 'Are you ready now? How about now? Now? How about now? Are you ready now?'"

When Paul finally crumbles, he mutes the Yankee game first.

Inside every funny person, we know, is a serious person fighting tears. In Julie Klam's case, the tears are for her astounding downward mobility. She was born with a silver spoon. She missed the memo about self-sufficiency and her parents decided not to coddle her. Unprepared for life, she hit some nasty speed bumps: no job, no money. Rather late, she woke up. The joke's on her.

Reading Julie Klam is like overhearing a funny person tell stories on a bus. It seems effortless. Don't be fooled. The little asides --- the observations about people --- are the product of much therapy and hard thinking. And the stories are seriously crafted. So what seem artless is really quite artful.

And what seems slight and funny and a throwaway turns out to...linger.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bittersweet, April 15, 2008

By 

Seneca Rocks (North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Please Excuse My Daughter (Hardcover)

This book offers a glimpse into a world that is far removed from my own upbringing, even though I grew up right down the road. The value of this book, for me, was to break down certain notions I held in regard to the "have-mores" within the community. It is very easy to throw out a kind of reverse prejudice of those who were born with every advantage, as viewed by those for whom nothing was ever taken for granted. Through a bittersweet, relentlessly funny prose "Please Excuse My Daughter" reminds us that every advantage is not an advantage, and that an affluent childhood can impose the strangest kinds of liabilities. It's not easy to sympathize with the princess, but this book at least has the power to abolish resentments. I think that it is a book that allows those of us who did not grow up in this kind of world to humanize the stereotype while we laugh through the fragile premise that is at the heart of most self important people. This book should come with an adult diaper and a box of tissues. Worth the buy. A fast read. Each paragraph surprises and delights, often simultaneously.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars topic for discussion, April 10, 2008

By 

Laura Trabucco - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Please Excuse My Daughter (Hardcover)

I loved Please Excuse My Daughter. I am going to recommend if for my next book group meeting. The book made connections to important, and often unaddressed, concerns in my life. The writing was real, thought provoking, at times upsetting and frequently humorous. I can't wait until we discuss this book!