Perfection by Julie Metz

Flap Copy from ARC: "Julie Metz seemed to have the perfect life - an adoring if demanding husband, spirited daughter, a lovely old house in an idyllic town outside New York City - when in an instant, everything changed. Her charismatic, charming husband, Henry, suffered a pulmonary embolism and collapsed on the kitchen floor. Within hours he was dead, and Julie was a widow and single mother at forty-four. Just like that, what seemed like a perfect life melted away. But the worst was yet to come.

Six months after his death, Julie discovered that her husband of twelve years, the man who loved her and their six-year-old daughter ebulliently and devotedly, had been unfaithful throughout their marriage, going so far as to conduct an ongoing relationship with one of Julie's close friends."

Metz has produced a raw and moving memoir of her life as a grieving widow faced with the reality of her dead husband's infdelity. Her writing is honest and brave as she chronicles the unraveling of her marriage post her husband's death - as evidence of each new woman comes to light, Metz acknowledges that there were signs along the way, signs she either misread or simply ignored.

She approached her 'recovery' with zeal, contacting all of her husband's lovers, researching the sociology and psychology of infidelity and of human desire, but also with the very real shame, fear and dismay that anyone would feel in the same situation. Metz was more forgiving than I can imagine being, and there were times along the way that I found her self-questioning to be tedious, but overall I was rooting for her, hoping she would emerge at the end of the tunnel with a capacity for love and happiness that had previously been taken from her. This memoir is definitely worth the read - I give it 3.5 stars.