Customer Reviews

Slow Motion: A True Story

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have read literally dozens of memoirs the past few years and this book is as good as any of them. In addition to being so well written, its unflinching honesty and pain make it impossible to put out of your thoughts long after you've finished. The author doesn't try to excuse or exaggerate her own shortcomings and weakness and the picture she paints of her lawyer lover is so slimy and ugly the only question one asks is how possibly could she have fallen for him. of course, we know the answer: money, insecurity, fame, romance, etc. Growing up in a Jewish family with all the attendant confused feelings about God, observance and the family feuds that seem to accompany it all, I could easily relate to what Shapiro experienced with her family. This is not a prurient or self-pitying book and it's almost hard to pinpoint its attraction other than to settle on its honesty, integrity and the drama attached to a life when one finally matures and realizes there are more pre! ssing reasons to live than simply in pursuit of one's own pleasure and respite from pain. People depend on us, sometimes too much, and the sacrifices we make for family can be suffocating. As the author points out, what kind of person would we be if we didn't at least try to live up to some of the expectations. I loved this book.

Competently written, but I am troubled by Slow Motion's disingenuousness. Dani Shapiro seems to be giving us what is usually called a "brutally frank" picture of an ugly chapter in her life, and she portrays herself as a woefully naive New Jersey girl--one of the world's leading innocents--who got mixed up with a beastly man (before she dated the beastly man, she dated "a [college] senior who...tried to feel me up"). In "Vogue," an admiring reviewer made reference to this man's having taken Shapiro's virginity as well as her innocence. Actually, when the 20-year-old Shapiro got involved with "Lenny Klein," she had already been married and divorced--she wrote openly of her marriages in a "New Yorker" essay. Being divorced is nothing to be ashamed of, so why didn't Shapiro, who supplies plenty of information on her bulimia, her drinking, and her drug use, give us an accurate picture of her romantic history? In this particular memoir, it IS relevant. The omission of this information made me wonder, in retrospect, how much other personal history was airbrushed or revised or simply misleading. Taken too far, discretion is deception.

I tuned in to "This American Life" in the middle of Dani Shapiro reading from this book, without realizing the selection was her memoir! I was impressed enough to find and read the whole book. Ms. Shapiro is a gifted writer, and I look forward to reading her novels. I felt the strength of this book is her ability to describe the complexity of her feelings: guilt, anxiety, loss, and embarrassment, if not shame, at the life she leads as the "sugar baby" of a wealthy married man. It's emotionally candid without being self-indulgent.

I do want to know a little more, though, about the present. This is someone who has dealt with some difficult problems in her life, and gone on to carve out real success for herself. She barely touches on how good it feels to finally be in control of her life, and it feels as if something is missing. Maybe there are things she felt best to leave out? Unresolved issues? A relapse of some kind? What was it that prompted her to write this memoir, more than ten years after her father's death and the end of her affair?

I have recommended this book to my friends, even with my criticisms.

Writing memoirs must be a woefully difficult business. How to write about oneself without melodramatically playing up the past self's circumstances, concerns, and so forth, while being true to the emotions of the period? I think that's why the best memoirs ("Shot Through the Heart," "A Hole in the World," "The Liar's Club") are primarily portraits of other people who figured prominently in the authors' lives.

But in "Slow Motion," interesting as the other people in Dani Shapiro's world must be, they play only minor roles in the overblown drama of Shapiro's own self-indulgences. Even as Shapiro laments how her beauty determined a certain life for her, she also seems quite proud of that life--she squanders so many pages maundering on about how dissolute! aimless! and extravagantly empty! her life was that she seems in retrospect to be holding it up as some sort of hard-won badge. But, as someone below stated, Who gives a damn?

What *is* moving here is the very real tragedy that befell her parents; what a pity that we can only partially see that through the screen of Shapiro's "me me me" narrative.

I have totally mixed feelings about "Slow Motion".

On the one hand, I admire Shapiro's ability to criss-cross from events that happened before her parents' accident and after. I also admire her ability to paint a vivid picture of every scene, every person and the impact of every emotion.

What I feel I missed was...intimacy. I feel like D.S was telling this story to a group of strangers she was obligated to open up to, but really did not trust. To me, there seemed to be gaping holes. It was as if D.S was saying "Hey look, I'm only going to tell you so much and that's it" between the lines.

The one thing I was left curious about was "Jess". Did Lenny promise her a car for her 21st B-Day if she got D.S to come? Were "Jess" and "Lenny" having sex at one point and he told "Jess" that if she didn't get D.S to come that he would spill the beans?

It's always interesting to get a glimpse into the crevasses of someone's life and in that sense D.S did not disappoint. But I still feel like I don't know or understand this woman. And that leaves me feeling as though reading this book was an unfulfilling experience.

This is a beautifully written book that tells an amazing story. On the opening page the author learns that her parents have been in a terrible car wreck and that sends her on a journey back into her past and her heart. I was with her every step of the way. A truly inspiring book that unfolds like a detective novel as the writer confronts her her flawed past.

Her sentences may be well written, granted, but it doesn't add up. An ode to "gee how can I describe myself as beautiful, and get paid for it." Really she's just a glorified VHI House of Fashion type of person, or at least comes off this way in the memoir. I'd much rather read a book by a writer who cares about the world, and not herself

Sadly, Ms. Shapiro's memoir, misses the target completely. Reeking of insincerity, this neatly bound package is all too trite for my tastes. With little remorse, and absolutely no humility, I'm not exactly sure why Ms. Shapiro chose to publish this account(money?). A life of privilege, discarded, for the `fast-life' of cocaine, booze, and the lavish gifts of a much-older and married man gives me no call to sympathy. That she `found her way out' through personal tragedy may be admirable---I'm happy for her, but hardly front page news. A fast read, even the one-hour I spent with Ms. Shapiro was a waste of my time.

Fascinating! I hope Dani Shapiro writes about her life from the point where Slow Motion left off. Very much an incredible story.

I rank "Slow Motion" with "This Boy's Life" and "Shot in the Heart" as one of the best family memoirs ever published. Ms. Shapiro spares no one, especially her self, in the brutally honest and frank examination of what it means to be a member of a family, to love, to rebel, to leave, and to return. Few writers have had the courage to protray themselves and loved ones with such, clear and uncompromised vision. I found myself emotionally moved and morally challenged.