A brilliant comedy of manners about a Boston Brahmin's search for meaning from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Late George Apley In preparation for the twenty-fifth reunion of his class at Harvard, Harry Pulham is asked to collect and edit the personal histories of his fellow alumni. A glance at the previous year's Class Book tells him just how tedious the assignment will be: "I have been very busy all this time practising corporation law and trying to raise a family," a typical entry reads. "I still like to go to the football games and cheer for Harvard." Yet Harry's autobiography is almost indistinguishable from those of his classmates. From his career at a Boston investment firm to his marriage to childhood friend Kay Motford, he has always made the safe, familiar choice-with one exception. For a brief interlude after World War I, Harry joined an advertising agency in Manhattan and fell in love with a beautiful, independent woman unlike anyone he had ever met. A wholly unexpected future opened up for him in those few months, but when family obligations called him back to New England, the relationship came to a sudden end. Now, twenty years later, Harry believes that his story could not have turned out any other way. A clever satire that achieves heartbreaking poignancy, H. M. Pulham, Esquire is a masterpiece from the author declared by the New York Times to be "our foremost fictional chronicler of the well-born."
"A work of depth and complexity . . . at once hilarious and horrifying."
The Washington Post
"Strongly recommended."
Newsweek
"H.M. Pulham, Esquire is compounded of the same wry humor, the same incisive thrusts, the same easily flowing narrative which distinguished [The Late George Apley and Wickford Point]."
