Martha Stewart's daughter Alexis: a less-than-gracious look at life with Martha

Martha Stewart insists her daughter's book is all in good fun and encourages her viewers to buy it.

Alexis Stewart – daughter of Martha Stewart – will soon be releasing a book with details about growing up with her famous mother. The book's title is “Whateverland: Learning to Live Here.”

The book, which was co-written with Jennifer Koppelman Hutt, is scheduled for release on Oct. 18 and contains many details – some of them unflattering to her mother and many out of line with her image as a domestic goddess.

“Martha does everything better! You can't win!” Alexis wrote. “If I didn't do something perfectly, I had to do it again… I grew up with a glue gun pointed at my head.”

The book includes Alexis claiming that there was “never anything to eat at my house. Other people had food. I had no food.... There were ingredients but no prepared food of any kind.” Halloween, at their house, writes Alexis, was bleak. “There were no costumes. There was no anything. We turned off all the lights and pretended we weren't home.”

Alexis wrote that Stewart would make her wrap her own Christmas presents.

“She would hand me things right before Christmas and say, 'Now wrap these but don't look inside,' ” she wrote.

Stewart responded to the book yesterday on her show, seeming to be nothing but happy with its contents and saying that she had already read an advance copy.

“It's all about growing up – fabulous pictures, by the way. And it is hilarious and enlightening,” Stewart said.

Stewart said Alexis had sent her quotes that explained parts of the book. Martha Stewart also addressed the comment about there being no prepared food in the house.

“Yes, if you wanted to eat when she was growing up, you had to cook something,” Stewart said. “That was the whole idea. She is a superb cook.”

As for the Halloween claim, on her show, Stewart read from the quotes she said Alexis sent her clarifying the book.

“Oh, okay. I left out the years when my mother made me costumes on the sewing machine," Martha read from a piece of paper she said was written by Alexis. "Or let me wear all of my grandmother’s fabulous costume jewelry when I was very young and was a gypsy for Halloween. It was kind of fun pretending no one was home. No one else did that or would admit that they did it. And I still do it ‘til this day.”

Stewart encouraged viewers to buy the book.

“I must have instilled in her some good habits,” Stewart said of her daughter. “She’s tall, beautiful, gorgeous, and mother of baby Jude, and that’s all that counts.”

Molly Driscoll is a Monitor contributor.

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