Please Excuse My Daughter

by Julie Klam

Book Overview

A woman's hilarious, bittersweet account of growing up in a family of career-shunning, dependence-seeking women and her journey to a state of twenty-first-century self-reliance. Julie Klam was raised as the only daughter of a Jewish family in the exclusive WASP stronghold of Bedford, New York. Her mother was sharp, glamorous, and funny, but did not think that work was a woman's responsibility. Her father was fully supportive, not just of his wife's...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1594489807
• ISBN13: 9781594489808
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Length: 261 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.4" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Top 10 Reasons I Loved this Book

1. The author is hilarious. 2. The author is smart. 3. The author is completely relatable. 4. Her humor and experiences transcend beautifully into novel form. 5. Any 20 or 30 year old woman who doesn't know what she wants from life, where she's going, or how she's getting there will enjoy this story. 6. The author's genuine love and affection for her family and friends swelled in my heart and made me realize how much I love my family and friends. 7. The author shares her experiences working in really cool jobs, like Letterman and VH1. 8. Her experience buying her wedding dress, and her reaction afterwards, were the exact same as mine. LOL! 9. She reveals her true feelings about her honeymoon instead of playing the "it was fabulous!" card. 10. I bought this novel knowing nothing about it or the author, and realized after it ended (too soon) that I had read and loved many of her magazine articles over the last year.

Lucky us: Julie Klam missed the memo on self-sufficiency and had to learn the hard, funny way

"A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." That was Samuel Johnson, writing in the unthinkingly chauvinist 1700s. If he were writing now, he'd be noting the rash of memoirs by women, especially ones that try for humor. Because there's money in funny, and publishers and writers know it --- why else would a writer as talented and sophisticated writer as Nora Ephron feel bad about her.....neck? Ms. Ephron condescends. Julie Klam, in contrast, is genuinely funny. The difference is not in the writing; both women are deft storytellers. It's in the truth of the tale, the sense that the events described actually happened even though they are crazy and wrong and life ain't supposed to be like that. In other words, I buy Julie Klam's premise. That premise is simple: She's a Princess, not born but bred. Her father has achieved a house in Bedford (the Westchester town that is the weekend home to Ralph Lauren, Martha Stewart and a legion of WASPs) that comes with many acres and the appropriate assortment of animals. But Dad's busy. She's her mother's daughter. And her mother, no feminist, spends her time reading, yakking on the phone and shopping. Does Mom care that Julie is flunking everything? Me: "Wow, Jenny Doe is doing really well. She's a Rhodes Scholar, studying theoretical mathematics and counterterrorism and is very close to discovering the cure for cancer." My Mother: "Yeah, but she has those hairy arms." Julie drifts and stumbles through school. She applies to 26 colleges. She gets into two. After a year of actual study, she transfers to the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, where she majors in film, has me for a teacher and escapes without visible scars. She interns for David Letterman. Life's good. And then she hits the wall. In movies, a young woman goes to a job interview and says, "I'm not afraid of hard work." Julie Klam's truth: "I wasn't afraid of hard work. I just didn't want to do it." As we have seen, Julie is not lazy. She just hasn't been raised with a work ethic. And they don't seem to stock them at Bloomingdale's. Humor requires pratfalls and reversals. Once it's in gear, Please Excuse My Daughter has more than you'd expect. Bad jobs. Taking money from Dad. (When the American Express clerk asks Julie's occupation, her father says "Parasite" and only after a beat adds, "Like from Paris.") Working for Dad as a service clerk in his insurance business --- for six years. And there's the obligatory bad boyfriend, only in her case, he's a sociopath and an ex-con. And then, the big break. She gets a job as a writer for VH1's "Pop-Up Video." And an even bigger break: She nabs the boss as a boyfriend. This leads, of course, to her firing. Along the way: an abortion, her boyfriend's diabetes, Rod Stewart walking through the rented beach house. (Yes. Rod Stewart.) Marriage? Paul isn't ready. But Julie is patient. In her way: "Some days I'd si

This book breaks the mold

When you think of young peoples' memoirs, you think of self-serving, smarmy coming-of-age enlightenment rubbish. This Julie Klam memoir runs directly counter, presenting herself with all of her foibles in a charming, hilarious but painfully honest light that in many ways hightens the humor involved. It is the memoir that breaks the mold and delivers a hilarious, poignant and deeply satisfying read. Not because of some big message that comes out of it, but because of its clarity, honesty and above all laugh-out-loud good humor.

couldn't put it down

oops, I missed my subway stop. I bought this book and opened it on my way home. So many people write books that I can't relate to. They're either much better than me or much worse than me. I felt like if I were funny and self examining, oh yeah and if I could write and if i had an interesting life, i could have written this book. I loved every word.

topic for discussion

I loved Please Excuse My Daughter. I am going to recommend if for my next book group meeting. The book made connections to important, and often unaddressed, concerns in my life. The writing was real, thought provoking, at times upsetting and frequently humorous. I can't wait until we discuss this book!