MEGHAN DAUM is the author of the essay collection My Misspent Youth and the novel The Quality of Life Report, a New York Times Notable Book. Her column on political, cultural, and social affairs appears weekly in the Los Angeles Times and is distributed nationally through the McClatchy news service. She has contributed to public radio’s Morning Edition, Marketplace, and This American Life, and has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, GQ, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and The New York Times Book Review. She lives in Los Angeles.
“Funny, charming and shocking. . . . [Chronicles] an obsession that
threatens to upend sanity and bank accounts. . . . Daum has a rare
gift in her ability to keep readers laughing through her own tears.
. . . Her spirit is generous, her writing is buoyant, and her heart
is open to all the ways in which a house holds the key to
happiness. Perfection has nothing to do with it.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Wonderful. . . . Like having a long, glorious, no-holds-barred
conversation with your smartest, funniest friend about all the
juicy topics: real estate, class envy, bad dates, family identity,
and the discrepancies between the lives we aspire to and the lives
we lead. I’m awed by Daum’s honesty and talent.”
—Curtis Sittenfeld
“A delightful dissection of the real estate obsession that’s a
hallmark of our age, recession or no.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine
“Self-deprecatingly funny. . . . Daum uses her lifelong obsession
with finding the ideal living space to probe domestic desire, a
deeper restlessness than the search for quick profits.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Honest and endearing . . . richly drawn. . . . Daum captures the
now-gone moment when real estate became a national obsession,
chronicling the shared madness of those who could only take breaks
from watching HGTV to discuss closing costs. . . . As she moves
from coast to coast and in between, Daum is consistently
relatable.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Suffused with humor and desire. . . . Alternately whimsical,
philosophical and psychologically probing. . . . [An] enchanting,
compelling memoir on the impossibility of resisting an irresistible
object of desire.”
—The Miami Herald
“Daum tackles real estate—or, more pointedly, the fixation, anxiety
and magical thinking that often accompany it—with wit and a gift
for self-parody. . . . Her prose has smarts, style and personality,
but never turns pretentious. . . . It’s a pleasure to read this
author as she revisits comic misadventures and wrangles with a
hot-button topic.”
—Time Out New York
“Vividly described. . . . Daum exposes the modern real-estate-mad
female underground, where open houses (visited in rabid two-women
teams) are a seasonal blood sport, Zillow is a verb, and where
remodeling a collapsing farmhouse into a writer’s retreat could
instantly, we imagine, transform us into the George Plimpton of the
prairie.”
—The Atlantic Monthly
“Entertaining. . . . Like a romantic comedy in which Daum always
seems to rent Mr. Wrong. . . . Don’t be surprised if you race
through Life Would Be Perfect in a single night.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
“Daum is the essential Generation X-er. . . . She radiates the
eternal youthfulness and the fear of commitment that define her
cohort. . . . Life Would Be Perfect is the memoir of how the
wandering Ms. Daum finally put down some roots. . . . A great
book.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Timely. . . . Daum [is] a fine writer—candid, reflective, stylish,
fun and a bit prickly. Throughout the book, she offers an
unflinching portrayal of her anxieties and her aspirations. . . .
When she finally realizes that a house is not what will make her
whole, you can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief.”
—Associated Press
“In this funny, horrifying (she came this close to buying a place
near a roaring interstate because she was smitten with a landing),
achingly honest memoir, Daum explores the way we wrap our
identities in our surroundings, at one point wondering, ‘Did the
house look sexy on me?’ Home truths, indeed.”
—More
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