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.
Behind the idyllic facade of an East Hampton summer, a family unravels in spectacular fashion.
- A Wedding Like No Other: The tent is up and the guests are arriving, but the father of the bride lies in a coma after a forced detox--and the bride's mother insists the party must go on.
- Dysfunctional Family Dynamics: A portrait of a brilliant, globetrotting father lost to alcoholism and a theatrical, controlling mother whose social ambitions overrule a family catastrophe.
- Privilege and Its Secrets: Step inside the exclusive world of 1980s East Hampton, a sun-drenched enclave of old money and social protocol where appearances are everything and reality is something else entirely.
- Finding Her Voice: McCulloch's poignant, witty, and unflinchingly honest journey to understand her parents and claim her own identity in the wreckage of a picture-perfect life.
- For Readers of Literary Memoir: Fans of The Glass Castle and The Nest will be captivated by this stunning account of love, loss, and the unique ways in which a family can be unhappy.
