I cannot remember when I read Slow Motion by Dani Shapiro nor found her haunting blog about being a writer but when I did, I knew I found an author to love. She is vulnerable, she is fierce, she is honest and she is pretty damn smart. Her memoir, Slow Motion gave me the sense that sometimes living life in a deeply religious family, that provides too much safety when you are young, makes you realize that safety is what you run from and tragically, is what you come back to when you get older. Almost always. It centers you. It haunts you and it creates you as an adult.
Here is a description from Goodreads:
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 critically injured. Forced to reconsider her
life, Shapiro learned to re-enter the world she had left. Telling of a
life nearly ruined by the gift of beauty, and then saved through
tragedy, Shapiro's memoir is a beautiful account of how a life gone
terribly wrong can be rescued through tragedy.
If you are going to delve into Dani Shapiro I would suggest Slow Motion first.
I read the two fiction books (in my photo above) between her memoirs but I want to stick to Shapiro's memoirs first. In Devotion, Sharpiro takes us on a journey of what she really believe in. Memories of her family, highly religious and traditionally Jewish pushes her on a path to understand her parents, her losses as well as what it means to find oneself in a world of what her parents believe in and lived by. Perhaps to interject it into her own life after searching through traditional avenues. I found it to be a remarkable story. One I will not forget. Her personal life is put out there for display, she pushes the reader to think about where they come from culturally as well as religiously. And how we slip that faith into our lives as our parents once had who possibly had less demanding emotions, like anxiety, which are now staples in our waking lives.
Family History, fiction, was a good read. I will use Goodreads description below to describe the book:
From the prodigiously gifted author of the acclaimed memoir Slow Motion, a stunning and brutally honest novel about one family’s harrowing recovery from devastation.
Rachel
Jensen is perfectly happy: in love with her husband, devoted to their
daughter Kate, gratified by her work restoring art. And finally, she’s
pregnant again. But as Rachel discovers, perfection can unravel in an
instant. The summer she is thirteen, Kate returns from camp sullen,
angry, and withdrawn. Everyone assures Rachel it’s typical adolescent
angst. But then Kate has a terrifying accident with her infant brother,
and the ensuing guilt brings forth a dreadful lie—one that ruptures
their family, perhaps irrevocably. Family History is a mesmerizing journey through the mysteries of adolescent pain and family crisis.
I had read all these books a while back so my memory needed a refresh today. I flipped through the story just now and that wonderful reader "oh YES YES I remember that book, it was very good" kicked in. Shapiro knows family dynamics. She is one author I recommend to my book group members or friends who say, "I want a good book on family dysfunction." As I sat here and started reading it, I put it to the side to read it once again.
Black and White (my favorite fiction book by Shapiro, Goodreads description link below)
Clara
Brodeur has spent her entire adult life pulling herself away from her
famous mother, the renowned and controversial photographer Ruth Dunne,
whose towering reputation rests on the unsettling nude portraits she
took of her young daughter.
At age eighteen, sick of her
notoriety as “the girl in the pictures,” Clara fled New York City,
settling and making her own family in small-town Maine. But years later,
when Ruth reaches out from her deathbed, Clara suddenly finds herself
drawn back to the past she thought she had escaped. From the beloved
author of Family History and Slow Motion, a spellbinding novel that asks: How do we forgive those who failed to protect us?
From the Trade Paperback edition.
When someone asks you if you know of a good "mother-daughter" book, this is the one to recommend. It has a quality about it that hooked me in straight away. A photographer mom, a muse daughter promoting that never ending tension on who gave up on whom. And how it all grows through a system of psychology and reality. Again, another high recommendation.
Dani Shapiro never fails me, I have had other friends tell me they could not get into her books, which is always okay, after all, we are all discriminate readers some of the time. But for those that like the pull and drama of family, her books resonate. She ranks high on my list.
Other books by Dani Shaprio not read yet but on my TBR list:
Still Writing is on my Kindle. I can't wait to sit down and read, with a nice big cup of coffee, by the fire on a cold day.
Dani Shapiro's Website:
http://danishapiro.com/
