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Overview
From one of the most gifted writers of her generation comes the harrowing and exqui-sitely written true story of how a family tragedy saved her life. Dani Shapiro was a young girl from a deeply religious home who became the girlfriend of a famous and flamboyant married attorney--her best friend's stepfather. The moment Lenny Klein entered her life, everything changed: she dropped out of college, began to drink heavily, and became estranged from her family and friends. But then the phone call came. There had been an accident on a snowy road near her family's home in New Jersey, and both her parents lay hospitalized in critical condition. This haunting memoir traces her journey back into the world she had left behind. At a time when she was barely able to take care of herself, she was faced with the terrifying task of taking care of two people who needed her desperately.Dani Shapiro charts a riveting emotional course as she retraces her isolated, overprotected Orthodox Jewish childhood in an anti-Semitic suburb, and draws the connections between that childhood and her inevitable rebellion and self-destructiveness. She tells of a life nearly ruined by the gift of beauty, and then saved by the worst thing imaginable. This is a beautiful and unforgettable memoir of a life utterly transformed by tragedy.
Editorials
Lily Burana
Growing up is an ambiguous concept and, in many cases, a seemingly arbitrary process. Rarely is the call to maturity as blatant and sudden as the events that jerked writer Dani Shapiro out of the last vestiges of her meandering girlhood. In her new memoir, Slow Motion, the author of the novels Playing With Fire, Fugitive Blue and Picturing the Wreck details the events surrounding the car accident that landed her parents in the intensive care unit, forcing Shapiro to bring her own life into sharp focus.
Memoirs by the young are something of a gamble -- often the writers have neither the self-awareness nor the quantity (or quality) of life experience to warrant a book-length exploration. Slow Motion is the exception that proves the rule. As a pretty, pampered young girl from an Orthodox Jewish family living in northeastern New Jersey (the part of New Jersey the jokes come from, she writes), Shapiro grew up feeling torn between her parents, her religion and a desire for freedom from its constraints, and the rewards of developing her intellect vs. cruising by on her abundant beauty. Prior to the accident, she was a Sarah Lawrence student who took up with her best friend's married stepfather, Lenny Klein, a flashy attorney who dolled her up in couture suits, trotted her around the world and showered her with lies and lavish gifts. She traded in college for the gilded cage, dropping out of school to pursue her acting, her ambivalence-ridden mistressing and her drinking. These events, and those that occur after the accident, are presented with the artful structure and language of a novel and the absorbing pace and intriguing details (running through the airport in her mink coat; tossing back screwdrivers on a lunch break from her hospital vigil; hiring a private investigator to track the activities of Lenny) of a true-crime thriller.
At its finest, Shapiro's writing has the spare elegance of a thin, gold bracelet -- with all the timeless appeal and fine craft that implies. The moment when she wheels her father in to see her mother for the first time since the accident is absolutely heart-rending, yet devoid of melodrama. Her self-examination is stark and untainted by self-pity, as during a boozy appraisal of a businessman during the plane ride to her parents' bedside: "The whole notion of physical beauty has grown increasingly important to me as my intellectual curiosity has vanished ... I have used myself as a physical instrument, slicing my way through the world with nothing but youth, long legs, and long blond hair. At times I think I have chosen the easy way, but every once in a while I realize that this may be the hardest way of all."
Even as the tragedy brings out the very worst in Shapiro's family, it ultimately brings out the best in her. Eventually, Shapiro decides to tend her own garden instead of being an exotic bloom, artfully arranged for display, then left to wilt in substance-addled oblivion. A great piece of writing and an inspirational tale for those who would consider trading substance for surface, Slow Motion illuminates the rocky road to integrity and maturity in graceful but wrenching steps. -- Salon
New Yorker
When this memoir opens, the future novelist is a 23-year-old college dropout, an occasional actress, an alcoholic who uses cocaine, and the mistress of a flamboyant lawyer who is the stepfather of a former college classmate. This is a bizarre predicment for the daughter of rich Orthodox Jews, and, in spare, unflinching prose, Shapiro tells us how she worked her way out of a life of pointless degradation.Vanessa V. Friedman
The author remains notably free of self-pity and rigorous in her scrutiny. . .yet there's emotion on these pages that is rare among the recent spate of confessionals.— Entertainment Weekly
Library Journal
Successful novelist Shapiro (Picturing the Wreck, Doubleday, 1996) details the tumult and rebirth she experienced in early adulthood, illustrating how one tragedy can prevent another from happening. Things didn't look good when, relying on drugs and alcohol to drive her through life, Shapiro dropped out of college to become an actress and continue her love affair with her best friend's stepfather, a flashy New York attorney. Then, a tragic car accident that left both her parents in critical condition supplied a much-needed impetus for change. As Shapiro nursed her parents, she rebuilt her own life, eventually returning to college, establishing herself as a writer, and embracing the traditional Orthodox Jewish upbringing she had previously rejected. This absorbing story, written with humor and honesty, is a good choice for sophisticated young adults. [This book was excerpted in the August 24/31, 1998 issue of The New Yorker.--Ed.]--Joyce Sparrow, Oldsmar Lib., FLThe New Yorker
When this memoir opens, the future novelist is a 23-year-old college dropout, an occasional actress, an alcoholic who uses cocaine, and the mistress of a flamboyant lawyer who is the stepfather of a former college classmate. This is a bizarre predicment for the daughter of rich Orthodox Jews, and, in spare, unflinching prose, Shapiro tells us how she worked her way out of a life of pointless degradation.Vanessa V. Friedman
The author remains notably free of self-pity and rigorous in her scrutiny. . .yet there's emotion on these pages that is rare among the recent spate of confessionals. -- Entertainment WeeklyKirkus Reviews
There are two wrecks in this strikingly candid memoir, and one reads with the fascination and horror of drivers rubbernecking on a highway. The first wreck is the car crash that lands the author's parents in the hospital, her mother with 80 broken bones, her father in a coma. The second wreck is Shapiro's own life—a life that for much of the book makes it hard to sympathize with her. At the age of 23, in the mid-'80s, she is a cocaine-snorting, liquor-swilling, aspiring-actress babe and the mistress of her former best friend's stepfather. Having dropped out of college, this product of an Orthodox Jewish home is kept in style by a boorish hotshot lawyer. He buys her furs, jewels, and sports cars, and she numbs her scorn for both him and herself with drugs and alcohol. One feels equal parts pity and revulsion that such an intelligent, beautiful young woman can live such a vapid and amoral life. Shapiro's saving grace is that she is equally repulsed in retrospect, making no excuses for her bad behavior. And, with her parent's horrific accident as a wake-up call, as Shapiro gains respect for herself, the reader gains respect for her, as well.The portrait of her family, and of her mother in particular, is as unsparing as her self-portrait—no airbrushing hides the ugliness of the anger that drives her mother: she is incandescent, lit from within by a rage she has carried all her life, and which, at the moment of the crash, became her life source. It will force Shapiro to become estranged from her father's family at the time she needs them most. Novelist Shapiro too often settles for cliches when she is capable of evocative and original prose, but her story accumulatesemotional power as a lost young woman finds her way back to normalcy and a sense of purpose.