I tore through this book, reading in tiny fractions of my day, even when I had no time to sit down and focus on reading alone. The first half of the book is especially fascinating, as the author and her family rapidly fall from their life of privilege and excess.

The story is fast-paced and the book is an easy read. I liked the author's writing style for the most part, my only complaint being a very a disjointed sense of time. I read a lot of memoirs and they are rarely written as simple narratives, with straight Point-A to Point-B stories. Like our lives and our memories, some weeks fly by and others crawl. In the case of "After Perfect" however, time was almost impossible to follow. We jumped forward and backward, finding out about events well after they had actually happened in relation to other events. At one point, the author talks about getting a job in a restaurant, describes it in some detail, and then within a page or two, tells us she was eventually fired, but had managed to hold onto the job for a year. I was left wondering . . . what else happened during that year? It was a WHOLE year--one very near the beginning of the story. The details of the author's life outside of this job during that year were glossed over or not mentioned at all . . . or maybe they were part of the rest of the story, but I couldn't tell because it was almost never clear how much time had actually passed when reading the book! So many times when reading, I wondered, what year is this? How long has he been in prison? In the end, this problem didn't deeply damage my enjoyment of the story, but I think more attention to time would have improved it. I also left wondering, if, maybe the author's muddled sense of time had a lot to do with the amount of drugs and alcohol she was consuming during this time period? There were sections of this story when she was never sober; I find it easy to imagine the timeline was vague because her memories of exactly when events took place are a bit vague as well.

Surprisingly, I had little difficulty getting through long chapters of drug and alcohol-fueled failures. The author made some bad decisions early on, but, strangely, not nearly as bad as I expected. She definitely does write about alcohol and drug use in detail, but, unlike many other authors with similar stories, she doesn't wax poetic about it. By the end of the book, I was not bothered by her many long drunken periods, but by the constant (CONSTANT) name-dropping of the rich and wealthy and the myriad fashion labels they drape themselves in. I could have done without that. But, in retrospect, I think the author chose to use these labels on purpose, to really describe the excessive lifestyle they lived. I won't spoil it, but she makes a decision near the end of her narrative that really demonstrated how much she had grown over the course of the story and I was inclined to forgive her for doting on a Birkin Bag like a desperately wanted baby.

All in all, I would recommend the book. I think most people will find it interesting and I would encourage you to look up the author's article titled "An Open Letter to the Makers of the Wolf of Wall Street, and the Wolf Himself" when you finish. The article is not great, in my opinion, but you must read it so that you then understand the far more interesting rebuttal her father published. You'll find it by searching for "Tom Prousalis rebuttal to Wolf of Wall Street letter". I read both of these after finishing the book and they helped to convince me that the author's depiction of her father was quite accurate.
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Christina McDowell's After Perfect is a fiery, searing memoir about how her family was shattered by her father's crimes on Wall Street and his conviction in 2004 for securities fraud. The strength of this book lies in the authors ability to vividly describe how her family imploded when her father was arrested and its devastating emotional, financial and physical toll. Ms. McDonnell lost so much in the aftermath, the most important being her trust and connection to her father. She also begins to question the fairness of life and why some have so much and some so little. It is only with losing that she questions who and why some people are winners and in the end, this benefits her. She is able to reach out and give back and also receive sustenance from others.

After Perfect is a painful read. Part of that is because of all of the grief and loss that she endures and partly because, in some ways, it seems that Ms McDonnell is still caught up in trying to succeed in a profession that is centered on looks, vanity and who you know. She is lucky that she does have connections that save her when she most needs it and that she has access to privilege that many others do not have. This is not a criticism (and I don't have much empathy for reviewers who believe it doesn't matter because she was rich). She uses these to try to become an actress and that is fine. I just wonder what what toll this may take and if there might be a better use of her talents, skills, education, connections that is not dependent on such ephemeral values. The person I mostly ached for was her mother. Older and only knowing how to depend on men (which seems true for all of the women in the family) her choices seemed so limited. While at times I was angry that she seemed to desert her children in dire times, survival was at a premium and came at a cost to all of them.

Thank you to Ms McDowell for her memoir and for NetGalley for giving me an opportunity to review this book for an honest review. ( )