Reviews of Perfection
“Heart-wrenching but triumphant.”
—Glamour
“Dark and affecting.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Lyrical, haunting, and utterly gripping.”
—Redbook
"[Metz] brings refreshing candor to a startling, painful tale"
—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“Perfection is—unbelievably, thrillingly, heartbreakingly—true.”
—Deborah Copaken, author of Shutterbabe and The Red Book
“In lyrical, moving prose, we’re treated to a powerful story of love, infidelity, grief—and starting over.”
—Working Mother
“You’ll be absorbed by the real-life sleuthing in Perfection, a riveting memoir about a widow who discovers that her late husband lived a deceptive double life.”
—Real Simple
“Julie Metz gives us a brave and fascinating postmortem on a seemingly happy marriage, creating an emotional detective story that is unforgettable.”
—Elinor Lipman, author of Good Riddance and On Turpentine Lane
“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
“Julie Metz’s nervy memoir is astonishing and splendid….Metz is an emergency medical responder of the heart, a woman capable of throwing her own battered, disillusioned self a life-line. Perfection is awesome in the old, better sense of the word. I loved it.”
—Karen Karbo, author In Praise of Difficult Women and The Stuff of Life
“The seed of Perfection was rage, yet Metz’s fury is not ugly, not even vengeful. Instead it provides this book’s beautiful testimony that instead of killing the subject the author can do something that diminishes him even more totally. She can forgive him and move on.”
—Sarah Manguso, author of The Two Kinds of Decay and 300 Arguments
“When Julie Metz’s husband died unexpectedly, she found herself a sudden widow with a six-year-old daughter. She then discovered that her husband had been unfaithful to her throughout their marriage. This is a candid and moving story of loss, grief, betrayal, and reinvention.”
—Wendy Sheanin, director of Marketing at Simon & Schuster, offtheshelf.com
“We’ve all endured sudden life-changing, before-and-after moments of loss, but few of us have then had to endure the aftershocks that buffeted Julie Metz. Her memoir of the year after her husband abruptly died is poignant, powerful, and absolutely riveting.”
— Chris Bohjalian, bestselling author of Midwives and Secrets of Eden
“Julie Metz’s story is reminder that we are all vulnerable to human frailty, both in those we love and in ourselves. She writes with confidence, grace, and the raw humility that can only come from having arrived to a new understanding of herself through her past.”
—Kerry Cohen, author of Loose Girl