Amazon.com Review
Dani Shapiro was rescued by tragedy. At the age of 23 she is a wreck. A Sarah Lawrence college dropout, she is living as the mistress--one of many, she would later find out--of her best friend's stepfather, Lenny, a high-profile New York City lawyer. It is the height of the excessive '80s, and Lenny goes to extravagant lengths to keep his woman--putting her up in a large downtown apartment, draping her in furs and flashy gems, and spiriting her away by Concorde to Paris for weekend flings. When she isn't with Lenny, Shapiro leisurely courts an acting and modeling career and actively pursues her drug dealer, who delivers cocaine to her door. She is at an expensive spa in California--at a far remove from the middle-class, orthodox Jewish home in which she was raised--when, one snowy night, her parents' car careens into a highway median. When she returns to New Jersey, to her parents' hospital bedsides, she begins the journey to discover and mine her inner strength. She succeeds, and though the process is as arduous as it is painful, Shapiro finds within herself the power to nurse her mother through nearly 100 broken bones, to survive her father's death, and to reset the course of her life.
Slow Motion ends where its subject's troubles began: with Shapiro, newly single, re-enrolling as an undergrad at Sarah Lawrence.
Shapiro, who is the author of three previous novels, writes sparely and lacks the excessive self-consciousness that plagues some memoirs. She develops her story carefully, drawing readers ever closer into her most intimate thoughts and fears. This honest, and sometimes brutal account of loss and recovery is an inspiration.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From 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.AEd.]AJoyce Sparrow, Oldsmar Lib., F.
-AJoyce Sparrow, Oldsmar Lib., FLCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
