The Glass Castle meets The Nest in this stunning debut, an intimate
family memoir that gracefully brings us behind the dappled
beachfront vista of privilege, to reveal the inner lives of two
wonderfully colorful, unforgettable families. On a mid-August
weekend, two families assemble for a wedding at a rambling family
mansion on the beach in East Hampton, in the last days of the
area's quietly refined country splendor, before traffic jams and
high-end boutiques morphed the peaceful enclave into the
"Hamptons." The weather is perfect, the tent is in place on the
lawn. But as the festivities are readied, the father of the bride,
and "pater familias" of the beachfront manse, suffers a massive
stroke from alcohol withdrawal, and lies in a coma in the hospital
in the next town. So begins Jeanne McCulloch's vivid memoir of her
wedding weekend in 1983 and its after effects on her family, and
the family of the groom. In a society defined by appearance and
protocol, the wedding goes on at the insistence of McCulloch's
theatrical mother. Instead of a planned honeymoon, wedding presents
are stashed in the attic, arrangements are made for a funeral, and
a team of lawyers arrive armed with papers for McCulloch and her
siblings to sign. As McCulloch reveals, the repercussions from that
weekend will ripple throughout her own family, and that of her
in-law's lives as they grapple with questions of loyalty,
tradition, marital honor, hope, and loss. Five years later, her own
brief marriage ended, she returns to East Hampton with her mother
to divide the wedding presents that were never opened.
Impressionistic and lyrical, at turns both witty and poignant, All
Happy Families is McCulloch's clear-eyed account of her struggle to
hear her own voice amid the noise of social mores and family
dysfunction, in a world where all that glitters on the surface is
not gold, and each unhappy family is ultimately unhappy in its own
unique way.
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