All Happy Families: A Memoir

An “elegant, searching memoir peels back the glittering layers of privilege” of a New York family and “exposes the soft, complicated, tender core beneath” (Dani Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of Inheritance).

On a summer weekend, two families assemble for a wedding at a family mansion on the beach in East Hampton.

But as the festivities are readied, the father of the bride suffers a massive stroke from alcohol withdrawal. So begins Jeanne McCulloch’s vivid memoir of her wedding weekend in 1983 and its after effects. 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.

At turns both witty and poignant, All Happy Families is McCulloch’s 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.

“McCulloch is as wise as she is funny.” —Mona Simpson, author of Casebook and My Hollywood

“A poignantly intimate memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A distinct and evocative work.” —Vogue

© 2023 Harper (E-bog): 9780062234773

Release date

E-bog: 21. november 2023