Meghan Daum

Best-selling author Meghan Daum is a popular contributor to such publications as The New Yorker, Harper's, and Vanity Fair. In this wickedly funny and provocative novel, New York lifestyle reporter Lucinda Trout heads to the Midwest for a taste of "real life." But as she finds out, the heartland isn't quite the paradise it seems. Full of poignant insights and peppered with outrageous humor, this marvelously entertaining tale castigates modern vanity....

One of the main topics of cultural conversation during the last decade was the supposed "fertility crisis," and whether modern women could figure out a way to have it all-a successful, demanding career and the required 2.3 children-before their biological clock stopped ticking. Now, however, conversation has turned to whether it's necessary to have it all (see Anne-Marie Slaughter) or, perhaps more controversial, whether children are really a requirement...

"A master of the personal essay candidly explores love, death, and the counterfeit rituals of American life In her celebrated 2001 collection, My Misspent Youth, Meghan Daum offered a bold, witty, defining account of the artistic ambitions, financial anxieties, and mixed emotions of her generation. The Unspeakable is an equally bold and witty, but also a sadder and wiser, report from early middle age. It's a report tempered by hard times. In "Matricide,"...