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Perfection
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
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Editorial reviews
Perfection is Julie Metz's reflection on what happens next, after her comfortable life is turned upside down when her husband Henry drops dead of a heart attack on their kitchen floor. As the days, weeks, and months after Henry's death unfold, Julie struggles to keep it together, for herself and her daughter, while finding her way through this new life.
Cassandra Campbell's narration of Julie's story is soothing and calm, giving the words an almost seductive feel. There are many characters in this book, and Campbell does a great job differentiating them with a slight accent or just a hardening of her voice. Her characterization of Julie's young daughter Liza is particularly compelling, really making her stand out from all the adults in the book. Campbell's performance is never overdone, and all the people from a variety of countries that Julie encounters are brought to life effortlessly.
Julie's first tentative steps down the path to recovery are shrouded in grief and self-doubt. An affair with Tomas, a close friend, distracts her momentarily from her loss, but her world comes crashing down once again when she learns of the late Henry's repeated infidelities, particularly with Kathy, one of her close friends.
Fueled by anger and hurt, Julie begins to unravel Henry's past, getting a picture of his relationship with Kathy and its curious similarities to her own marriage. Digging further, she discovers the kind of man Henry truly was both to her and his other women. In her quest to uncover Henry's true personality, Julie embarks on a journey of self-discovery, turning inward, wondering who she is now without her husband. Slowly, while she begins to rebuild her life with a new love, Julie rediscovers her sense of self and finally begins to heal.
While Julie Metz's story of lost love and infidelity is compelling and tragic with obvious emotion, her effort in sharing her experience is almost too much. The writing tends to wander all over the place with no detail, large or small, left out. Coupled with the large number of people involved in Julie's journey, the events can be difficult to follow as they unfold, but Campbell's narration makes the best of the material, providing an engaging listen. Lesley Grossman
Publisher's summary
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 12 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.
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Story
When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
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Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
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Until I Say Good-Bye
- My Year of Living with Joy
- By: Susan Spencer-Wendel, Bret Witter
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Susan Spencer-Wendel's Until I Say Good-Bye: My Year of Living with Joy is a moving and inspirational memoir by a woman who makes the most of her final days after discovering she has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). After Spencer-Wendel, a celebrated journalist at the Palm Beach Post, learns of her diagnosis of ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, she embarks on several adventures, traveling to several countries and sharing special experiences with loved ones.
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Until I Say Good-Bye is a paradox for me.
- By Bonny on 03-19-13
By: Susan Spencer-Wendel, and others
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Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
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I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This
- A Memoir
- By: Nadja Spiegelman
- Narrated by: Nadja Spiegelman
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers - French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly - exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja's body changed and "began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand", their relationship grew tense.
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Aweful
- By Haley Abreu on 07-05-17
By: Nadja Spiegelman
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The UnAmericans
- Stories
- By: Molly Antopol
- Narrated by: Jennifer Van Dyck
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Again and again, Molly Antopol’s deeply sympathetic characters struggle for footing in an uncertain world, hounded by forces beyond their control. Their voices are intimate and powerful and they resonate with searing beauty. Antopol is a superb young talent, and The UnAmericans will long be remembered for its wit, humanity, and heart.
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Sensational stories! Brilliant new author.
- By MidwestGeek on 05-04-14
By: Molly Antopol
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She Regrets Nothing
- A Novel
- By: Andrea Dunlop
- Narrated by: Rachel Dulude
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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When Laila Lawrence becomes an orphan at 23, the sudden loss unexpectedly introduces her to three glamorous cousins from New York who show up unannounced at her mother's funeral. The three siblings are scions of the wealthy family from which Laila's father had been estranged long before his own untimely demise 10 years before. Two years later, Laila has left behind her quiet life in Grosse Point, Michigan to move to New York City, landing her smack in the middle of her cousins' decadent world.
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Good Listen
- By Vallena on 02-19-18
By: Andrea Dunlop
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Mother Daughter Me
- A Memoir
- By: Katie Hafner
- Narrated by: Katie Hafner
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The complex, deeply binding relationship between mothers and daughters is brought vividly to life in Katie Hafner's remarkable memoir, an exploration of the year she and her mother, Helen, spent working through, and triumphing over, a lifetime of unresolved emotions. Dreaming of a "year in Provence" with her mother, Katie urges Helen to move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoe, Katie's teenage daughter. Katie and Zoe had become a mother-daughter team, strong enough, Katie thought, to absorb the arrival of a 77-year-old woman set in her ways....
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Listen and be swept away!
- By Barbara Quick on 06-02-22
By: Katie Hafner
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Property
- Stories Between Two Novellas
- By: Lionel Shriver
- Narrated by: Lionel Shriver
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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A striking new collection of ten short stories and two novellas that explores the idea of property in every meaning of the word, from the acclaimed New York Times best-selling author of the National Book Award finalist So Much for That and the international best seller We Need to Talk About Kevin.
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Painful and drawn out
- By JR on 06-27-18
By: Lionel Shriver
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When It Happens to You
- A Novel in Stories
- By: Molly Ringwald
- Narrated by: Molly Ringwald
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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When it happens to you, you will be surprised. That thing they say about how you knew all the time, but just weren't facing it? That might be the case, but nevertheless, there you will be. Molly Ringwald mines the complexities of modern relationships in this gripping and nuanced collection of interlinked stories. Writing with a deep compassion for human imperfection, Ringwald follows a Los Angeles family and their friends and neighbors while they negotiate the hazardous terrain of everyday life - revealing the deceptions, heartbreak, and vulnerability familiar to us all.
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Narrated by Molly!
- By JillHen on 03-01-13
By: Molly Ringwald
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A Nantucket Wedding
- A Novel
- By: Nancy Thayer
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A few years after losing her beloved husband, Alison is doing something she never thought she would do again: getting married. While placing the finishing touches on her summer nuptials, Alison is anxious to introduce her fiancé, David, to her grown daughters: Felicity, a worried married mother of two, and Jane, also married but focused on her career. The sisters have a somewhat distant relationship and Alison hopes that the wedding and the weeks leading up to the ceremony will give the siblings a chance to reconnect, as well as meet and get to know David’s grown children.
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So boring
- By LRogers on 05-04-18
By: Nancy Thayer
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Nearly Normal
- Surviving the Wilderness, My Family and Myself
- By: Cea Sunrise Person
- Narrated by: Cea Sunrise Person
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In her best-selling memoir North of Normal, Cea wrote with grace about her unconventional childhood - her early years living in a tipi in Alberta with her pot-smoking, free-loving counterculture family. But her struggles do not end when she leaves her family at the age of 13 to become a model. Honest and daring, Nearly Normal reveals the many ways that Cea's unconventional childhood continues to reverberate through the years.
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This one is just not for me
- By Pamela Plimpton on 03-15-19
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Beer Money
- A Memoir of Privilege and Loss
- By: Frances Stroh
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Frances Stroh's earliest memories are ones of great privilege: shopping trips to London and New York, lunches served by black-tied waiters at the Regency Hotel, and a house filled with precious antiques, which she was forbidden to touch. Established in Detroit in 1850, by 1984 the Stroh Brewing Company had become the largest private beer fortune in America and a brand emblematic of the American dream itself; while Stroh was coming of age, the Stroh family fortune was estimated to be worth $700 million.
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Beer boring
- By Richard E. Putt Jr. on 05-22-16
By: Frances Stroh
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Us: A Novel
- By: David Nicholls
- Narrated by: David Haig
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that seduces beautiful Connie into a second date...and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades later, they live more or less happily in the London suburbs with their moody seventeen year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce. The timing couldn’t be worse. Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie. Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger.
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Great novel - my favorite in years
- By Mark on 07-21-15
By: David Nicholls
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The Island House
- A Novel
- By: Nancy Thayer
- Narrated by: Emily Sutton-Smith
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Every summer since college, twenty-nine-year-old Jenny has traded the familiarity of the Midwest for the allure of Nantucket. Now an established university professor in Kansas City, she finds herself caught between two lifestyles and two very different men. She chooses Nantucket and the glamorous life she associates with it, unaware that the summer will take an unexpected turn, and she will have to let her heart decide what it truly wants.
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I love Nancy Thayer's style of writing
- By L.W. on 07-31-16
By: Nancy Thayer
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The Unspeakable
- And Other Subjects of Discussion
- By: Meghan Daum
- Narrated by: Meghan Daum
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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It's a report tempered by hard times. In "Matricide", Daum unflinchingly describes a parent's death and the uncomfortable emotions it provokes; and in "Diary of a Coma" she relates her own journey to the twilight of the mind. But Daum also operates in a comic register. With perfect precision, she reveals the absurdities of the marriage-industrial complex, of the New Age dating market, and of the peculiar habits of the young and digital.
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Complaining about her dead mom.
- By Erik Hermansen on 11-23-14
By: Meghan Daum
What listeners say about Perfection
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Ellen
- 09-20-10
Bold and surprising
The best thing about this memoir is how the author had the nerve to call and interview her husband's mistresses. Which of us doesn't sit up nights peeking at Facebook, wondering about the other woman? Well, listen to this memoir and you can be there with the narrator as she calls and asks questions of her dead husband's many other women. You get to be a fly on the wall and one of the mistresses turns out to be really nice to the wronged wife. This would be good for anyone who's ever wondered, "What did she have that I didn't?" It doesn't answer that question for sure, but the reader begins to realize her husband probably was locked in a cheating spiral that wasn't making him happy, looking for something he couldn't find because he was unhappy with himself. Or something like that--in other words, the other women didn't have something the wife didn't have. The husband wasn't having this happy-go-lucky party while doing all his cheating--he was unhappy and looking for something that could probably never be satisfied.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Dina
- 03-28-10
Compelling
Though at times I found this book and the author frustrating, I couldn't stop listening to it. I always like to hear Cassandra Campbell's voice so that was a big enhancement. But, the subject was also compelling. A couple is married for 16 years, the husband dies very suddenly at 44, and the wife subsequently finds out he was unfaithful...many times over. Some of Julie's behaviors and her "living in denial" are hard to swallow and the book is too long, but Julie's story is engaging.
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2 people found this helpful
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- gwen
- 10-11-23
Learning of Relationship of 10 years just before husband’s death
After 41 year of marriage my husband of 88 passed away. 9 days before he passed he confessed to a 10 year relationship he had with one of our employees. He was very sick and when he told me I had my head in his lap and I immediately said I knew and I forgive you. That was easy in the moment and in his condition. But as I lay in the hospital room on my cot that night my heart broke and my mine begin spinning. I needed to know more about this. I had confronted him years ago and ask sitting in our bed one evening, were they having an affair and he denied it and then sometime later sitting on the beach at our house he again denied. At that moment I made the unhealthy decision to have faith in him and believe his answer. Why didn’t I trust my instinct and ask more questions. In the hospital there were 2 days of my cool reaction to this sick man but then I decided I had no choice but to show my love in what turned out to be his last days. i regret that he told me at this time. I don’t know if it was remorse or for his own need for a confession. But now i am struggling with losing my husband, who was the perfect husband as far as I knew and the lose of what I and our community thought was 2 very devoted people truly living a beautiful happy life. The answer here, trust your instincts and ask questions even if they are difficult and tell what makes you think this is happening.
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Overall
- Tumbleweed
- 05-25-10
Dreary and Tedious
This book was like a bad Dr. Phil episode that wouldn't quit. The narrator's voice was flat which added to the dreariness of the narrative. I had to listen to the end to see if Julie Metz had some kind of redeeming epiphany but it was not to be. Having been married successfully to my best friend for almost four decades, I wasn't surprised that her marriage to this self-absorbed man was a failure. There was nothing there to anchor it together in a meaningful way! When you start popping anti-depressants and hide behind motherhood, you're doomed. Julie, I'm sorry you shared this. It may have been cathartic for you but a downer for some of your readers.
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- Sharon
- 11-17-12
Self-indulgent
Would you try another book from Julie Metz and/or Cassandra Campbell?
I found the author's writing about herself and her life to be unaware and self-indulgent. It offered no insight and therefore was not interesting to read. Her stance sounded more like a victim who was getting out her self-pity in a book -- something better left to a private diary that others don't ever read.
The reader was good but it can't make up for poor content. Save yourself time and money. Don't waste your time on this book.
By contrast, the best autobiography I have ever read about someone losing their spouse is called Grace and Grit by Treya and Ken Wilber - an intense read and amazing book!
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Overall
- Alison Cooper
- 01-22-10
Enough Already
The book is tedious. Initially her coping with the betrayal of her husband moves things forward. Then we just get stuck in an endless loop. Eventually, you just don't care.
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2 people found this helpful