Imperfect Bliss

A Novel

reading group guide
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Reality TV—Jane Austen Style

Meet the Harcourts of Chevy Chase, Maryland. A respectable middle-class, middle-age, mixed-race couple, Harold and Forsythia have four eminently marriageable daughters—or so their mother believes. Forsythia named her girls after Windsor royals in the hopes that one day each would find her true prince. But princes are far from the mind of their second-born daughter, Elizabeth (AKA Bliss), who, in the aftermath of a messy divorce, has moved back home and thrown herself into earning her PhD. All that changes when a Bachelorette-style reality television show called The Virgin takes Bliss’s younger sister Diana as its star. Though she fights it at first, Bliss can’t help but be drawn into the romantic drama that ensues, forcing her to reconsider everything she thought she knew about love, her family, and herself. Fresh and engaging, Imperfect Bliss is a wickedly funny take on the ways that courtship and love have changed—even as they’ve stayed the same.

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Atria Books |
304 pages |
ISBN 9781451623826 |
July 2012

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Praise

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“Fales-Hill channels Jane Austen in a bawdy sendup of today’s landed gentry...but the hilarious hijinks of the Harcourts hide more poignant truths about these strong-willed women. She whips an old-fashioned comedy of manners... ”

– Publishers Weekly on Imperfect Bliss

“Chick lit with an intellectual streak.”

– Library Journal on Imperfect Bliss

“Convincingly updates Pride and Prejudice for the twenty-first century …the novel’s strength is Bliss, a complicated, thoughtful woman--a feminist raising a princess-obsessed daughter, and a very funny narrator. Issues... ”

– Booklist on Imperfect Bliss

“Imperfect Bliss is the perfect summer read. Susan Fales-Hill, a magnificent storyteller, has written a poignant and piquant comedy of manners that will make Jane Austen fans swoon. Delicious!”

– Adrianna Trigiani, bestselling author of The Shoemaker's Wife on Imperfect Bliss

“Imperfect Bliss is a hoot! Featuring a heroine who becomes entangled in the nutty world of reality TV, it's a fast, fun read.”

– Sarah Pekkanen, author of These Girls on Imperfect Bliss

“If Candace Bushnell and Zadie Smith had a literary love child, the result would be Imperfect Bliss.”

– Keli Goff, author of The GQ Candidate on Imperfect Bliss

“Imperfect Bliss's romantic heroine ultimately finds her epiphany in a journey through family discord, reality TV productions, and a candlelight dinner for two...this is reading as alluring as the best French perfume.”

– André Leon Talley, Editor at Large,Vogue on Imperfect Bliss

“A chick lit masterpiece that leaves Jackie Collins in the dust. ”

– New York Post on One Flight Up

“Frank and funny…A wise and wicked peek into the overstuffed closets and medicine cabinets of New York’s contemporary gilded set.”

– Essence on One Flight Up

“A sassy summer beach read. ”

– Vogue on One Flight Up

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chapter one

Bliss Harcourt stared down at her daughter who stood with cherubically plump arms tightly crossed to prevent her mother from removing her powder-blue ersatz satin princess dress. How do you tell a four-year-old you can have the right outfit and the right attitude but it doesn’t mean your prince will come? And even if he does show up, he might just ride away, permanently, mused Bliss as Bella scowled at her through baby bifocals worn beneath a spangled plastic tiara. “Bella, please take off the costume,” Bliss pleaded, not wanting to use bodily force, but aware that her stores of...

chapter two

Closely trailed by Bella, Bliss entered the wainscoted dining room to find her mother at the breakfast table in one of her trademark poses of soap-operatic grief. She leaned back in her reproduction Hepplewhite chair, one hand poised on a bosom so ample it strained the buttons of a peach chiffon peignoir two sizes too small. In spite of her agony, her Eartha Kitt bouffant wig (1980s vintage) was perfectly pinned in place and her “Very Vixen” lipstick flawlessly applied.

“Another opportunity lost,” Forsythia wailed as she handed the receiver to her youngest daughter,...

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Book Reviews

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Reading Group Guide

This reading group guide for Imperfect Bliss includes discussion questions and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. Take a closer look at the epigraphs for Imperfect Bliss. How does each relate to the novel? Do you think they are representing the point of view of a specific character?

2. On the surface, Harold and Forsythia are an unlikely couple. What do you think draws them together? Are there other unlikely couples in Imperfect Bliss that seem to work?

3. Do you think Imperfect Bliss takes a cynical or an optimistic take on love? What about marriage? Use examples from the novel during your discussion.

4. Bliss feels that history holds the keys to the present and the future. To what extent is this belief illustrated in the book? Do you agree with Bliss?

5. Discuss the ways that the novel addresses race. Would you say it is central to the plot? What about to the identities of the Harcourt daughters?

6. How do Bliss’s opinions of her mother and father evolve as the novel progresses?

7. On p. 246, Victoria compares being gay to being black. Do you agree with this comparison? Why doesn’t this seem see more