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Slow Motion
by
Dani Shapiro
Dani Shapiro, a young woman from a deeply religious home, 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 drinking, and neglected her friends and family. But then came a phone call-an accident on a snowy road had left her parents cr...more
Paperback, 256 pages
Published
October 21st 1999
by Mariner Books
(first published 1998)
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A well-written memoir of a NYC-area Jewish woman starting her adulthood in the 80's as a coked-out, bulimic, alcoholic, college-dropout mistress of an older, powerful, and well-known lawyer whose career and persona defined 80's excesses (here called "Lenny Klein," but without doubt the infamous disgraced litigator Harvey Myerson). The author is faced with a personal tragedy that forces her to re-examine her life's decisions and her unfulfilled childhood, and it is in this context she relates bot...more
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Could not put this down. What a story. Anybody else a Dani Shapiro fan? I'm going to read Picturing the Wreck next.
2 likes · like · see review
I liked this book, it was a quick and exciting read. I agree with other reviewers that it had many problems: first, by leaving out some important personal history (i.e. her first marriage), I think we get the wrong idea about who the author is in this book. Secondly, it is pretty much the story of how a highly privileged person in her 20s was forced out of adolescence by her parents' car accident. It's hard to muster much sympathy for someone whose real problem is that she is basically still a t...more
I'd like to give this book a rating of 2, but because I know that ten years ago, my early twenties self would have rated it a 5, I split the difference and settled on 3.
23-year-old me would have relished this memoir, but 33-year-old me no longer thinks Elizabeth Wurtzel is the best writer of her generation and is not so enamored with addiction and/or depression memoirs anymore.
In her early twenties, Dani Shapiro is a college dropout, failed model/actress, cocaine addict, alcoholic, mistress of...more
23-year-old me would have relished this memoir, but 33-year-old me no longer thinks Elizabeth Wurtzel is the best writer of her generation and is not so enamored with addiction and/or depression memoirs anymore.
In her early twenties, Dani Shapiro is a college dropout, failed model/actress, cocaine addict, alcoholic, mistress of...more
If you want to read a memoir about being the other woman that unfolds like the proverbial train wreck, here you go. The book is a good, compelling read, and you can see the author is putting her MFA to good use. My main quibble with it is her tendency to depict the events as things that just happened to her and were beyond her control.
Okay, this is an award winning memoir of Dani Shapiro young adult life as a Jewish daughter, small time actress, mistress to famed older lawyer--all of that, and after following her downward spiral for three fourths of the book, she finally gets herself together in a rushed final quarter. The car crash of her parents may precipitate some of this resurrection, but it's a long time before she gets any insight to herself. I was considering it as an all-college book read for our campus, but it just...more
This book came highly recommended to me, and I made the mistake of reading reviews before reading the book. And after reading the book, I can only wonder if the other reviewers read the same thing that I did.
This is nothing but a big whine. Poor me. Look at all these horrible things that happened to me. Wah wah wah. It's the story of a privileged woman making a lot of really stupid and narcissistic choices in her life, and then blaming the world for the way things turned out. There's no introspe...more
This is nothing but a big whine. Poor me. Look at all these horrible things that happened to me. Wah wah wah. It's the story of a privileged woman making a lot of really stupid and narcissistic choices in her life, and then blaming the world for the way things turned out. There's no introspe...more
I know I'm going against the tide here (the book had positive reviews, even in the N.Y.Times), but I hated this book. I read it because of an article by Shapiro on Salon.com that I really enjoyed. But I found this book to be self-indulgent and predictable and the writing uninspiring and not very perceptive. Maybe she was just not that accomplished of a writer when she wrote this and I should give her the benefit of the doubt. After all, I have liked her articles. But I guess this book just doesn...more
Dani Shapiro: a new favorite author for me. Slow Motion is a memoir of a time in her life that she still looks back on with a dull ache. In a bittersweet voice, she recounts her early twenties, during which she was a Sarah Lawrence drop-out, the mistress of a New York City lawyer, a drug addict, an alcoholic, and a failed actress -- all at once.
Unexpectedly, her life is rescued by tragedy. Her parents suffer a serious car accident. In taking responsibility for their health and well-being, she s...more
Unexpectedly, her life is rescued by tragedy. Her parents suffer a serious car accident. In taking responsibility for their health and well-being, she s...more
Sep 06, 2010
Tammie Vannoord
marked it as to-read
Couldn't put this one down!
Young girl keeps on making wrong choices and is pushed to normalcy by grief. All this written very nicely however, hence the 3 starts. I wished to know more about her family and what happened with Susie, and less about Lenny. I was constantly baffled by her choices, like going to dinner with Lenny on the eve of the funeral instead of staying with her newly-widowed mom. Bad choices happened to her, she did not make any somehow. I liked however the passages about the Orthodox Jewish faith.
Shapiro is a terrific writer and it's a tribute to her skill that she managed to hook me into a memoir about her not-so-likable younger self. I was blown away, actually, by how different she seems here than she does in her second memoir, Devotion. Do all of us undergo a transformation as radical as hers? Or does it take the depressing chain of events she recounts in Slow Motion to shift one's trajectory so dramatically?
After reading Shapiro's recently published "Devotion," I went back to some of her earlier work as I found her writing to be well-crafted, balanced, thoughtful, engaging and enjoyable. Slow Motion, another memoir, was very similar in kind to "Devotion," but eminently readable, and a serious page turner - I started it on the train in the morning and absolutely devoured it, even staying up until 2 a.m. to finish it!
I enjoyed Devotion, so I decided to read Shapiro's earlier memoir. Her behavior is rather off-putting, even if she acknowledges her responsibility, and most of the characters are pretty tiresome. It was well-written and interesting, but I just didn't connect in the same way. Guess I needed to wait for Shapiro to grow up and be my age!
One of my favorite books and authors, just gut wrenching. I know her boyfriend, I lived the story. Emailed her to verify and she concurred. Also loved Picturing the Wrech and Family History. I just love the way she writes. Her books her just gutwrenching. Hoping she publishes a new book this year!
Read this book in one day (yay vacation!).
It is an excellent memoir that tells the process by which the writer made a bizarre and serious mess of her life, and then the process by which she slowly began to rebuild and reclaim her life. Sad, fascinating, and well written.
It is an excellent memoir that tells the process by which the writer made a bizarre and serious mess of her life, and then the process by which she slowly began to rebuild and reclaim her life. Sad, fascinating, and well written.
I'm so glad Dani Shapiro wrote an autobiography. It's always entertaining to read about the author from their own words. I was glad to see that she didn't have any "Everything is awful and none of it is my fault" times. She did make some bad decisions, but she took full responsibility for them, knowing she had the power to change. I thought it was quite honest and I'm glad I picked it up.
I give it a four start "really liked this book" rating b/c I have been missing reading memoirs and her life is so different than mine, how could I not be entranced? She was the mistress of some rich powerful New York lawyer for four years. She's from a wealthy Jewish family and she was an only child, and then in the middle of this affair she's having, her parents are in a car wreck (this happens at the beginning of the book) which starts her on a path to putting her life back on course, because...more
A memoir about a parent's death that includes her recovery from alcoholism and a terrible affair with her best friend's step father (who ends up being a crook). It's a pretty upper class/exclusive world that I didn't connect with.
The original subtitle is "A memoir of a life rescued by tragedy." Not sure when I'll be brave enough to read this book, but I picked it up at the Dollar Table at the Strand, so it's waiting for me when I get up the nerve.
I learned about this book after hearing the author read a portion of it on an old podcast of This American Life. I was intrigued. The section was about her affair with a married high-powered lawyer that was also the father of her best friend. The book was about so much more, her childhood in a jewish (half orthodox) home and the tragic car accident her parents were in that kicks off the book. She's able to jump back and forth in time with a strong narrative.
I read the book in just a couple days...more
I read the book in just a couple days...more
Zipped through in two days. Love everything Shapiro writes. I'd read most of her fiction already so it was interesting to read about her life from before she started writing. Will read DEVOTION soon.
Whether completely true or not, I liked her writing and the story was intriguing. I believe her first book was a novel based on her true story. I plan to read that, too, in the near future.
Shapiro's account of her life as a young woman who's struggle with substance abuse came to and end with her parent's tragic car accident that killed her father....a true story of transformation...
This book was so captivating I basically read it in a day. Beautifully written memoir. I can't wait to read her other non-fiction and check out her fiction as well. Truly original voice.
Overall the prose is fine, but tends to veer into sentimentality and melodrama in moments. What bugged me about this book though was her self-pity and lack of accountability for her own actions.
I am really looking forward to reading Devotion, her next book. I liked this book and it definitely kept me reading but i found her a bit annoying by the end.
A stunning prequel to the writer she would become. You will not like her, or the story she tells, but the redemption and fulfillment is foretold.
Beautifully written, very poetic, amazingly artistic language. A haunting story about the danger of sublimating your self completely to another.
I loved this book. I love memoir in general, and this is one that was very honest and introspective. Plus I love Shapiro's style.
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Dani Shapiro is the author of five novels and the best-selling memoir Slow Motion. She has also written for magazines such as The New Yorker and Elle.
She lives with her husband and young son in Litchfield County, Connecticut.
More about Dani Shapiro...
She lives with her husband and young son in Litchfield County, Connecticut.
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