Slow Motion by Dani Shapiro

by Dani Shapiro

At twenty-three, Dani Shapiro was in the midst of a major rebellion against her religious upbringing. She had dropped out of college, was halfheartedly acting in television commercials, and was carrying on with an older married man when her life was changed, in an instant, by a phone call. Her parents had been in a devastating car accident. Neither was expected to survive. In her first memoir, Shapiro offers this powerful true story of a life turned around--not by miracles or happy endings, but by unexpected personal catastrophe.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Biography Memoir, Family, Ebooks, Autobiography

Hardcover

First published July 7, 1998

About the author

Dani Shapiro is the bestselling author of the memoirs Hourglass, Still Writing, Devotion, and Slow Motion, and five novels including Black & White and Family History. She lives with her family in LItchfield County, Connecticut. Her latest memoir, Inheritance, will be published by Knopf in January, 2019.

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audiobook ... read and written by Dani Shapiro.

I’m not the only Dani Shapiro fan —but I’m definitely one of them.
Dani is both a novelist and a memoirist.
The best way to experience her memoirs, are to listen to her read them.
She’s real, authentic, shares a lot about herself, ( her accomplishments, blessings, and well as her losses, depression, struggles, and flaws)....
She writes about her family in all her books...
Dani grew up in an orthodox Jewish family, as an only child

Over time, ( combing all her memoirs together), ...we see a pattern:
Dani is sharing her life journeys with us:
Exploring....
.....privileges, sorrows, college, friends, writing, career, addictions, relationships, regrets, tragedies, deaths, insights, marriage, children, and self growth.

Readers who are fans... have a pretty good idea what to expect when they begin reading a memoir from Dani....
MOSTLY they/ we/ me...look forward to being in the palm of her hands....
again, again, and again.
It doesn’t matter if her writing is polished — but she writes lovely....
what stands out is her vulnerability- honesty- and humanity.

We don’t know the content -completely- of what is in each memoir....
....in each memoir there is definitely something ‘new’ ( a whole new story we haven’t heard yet),
and we're reminded of things she wrote before ....
beautifully blending her past work and her present...
Reflecting how they connect together

In this memoir- Dani reflects, and connects - ‘part’ of her childhood and adulthood, (we learned different details in past memoirs)...
.....in this one Dani did a lot
... a lot of ‘soul-looking’.... as she examined the mystery of her younger self.
It was enlightening to be privy to Dani’s self exploration.
From being young, reckless, precocious, and a little pathetic at age 23, when the car crash happened...
(but damn honest), to the redemption and transformation that opened.


This isn’t the very first book I would choose of Dani Shapiro’s to read. There might be too many holes and unanswered questions unless you’ve already read her other books.

I enjoyed “Slow Motion”.... and it’s gorgeous way she ended it....
But
this is not her ‘most complete’ memoir, IMO.

The details about the car accident - serious as can be - for both her parents was devastating.
Learning about Lenny Klein....was one of those ( my god)> awful, regretful experiences that one just needs to forgive - learn from - and move on.

I’m not sure everything would make sense —without having read her other books first. ( maybe)...
But....
Too many holes went unsaid ( or said, but under-developed ), for a ‘newbie’ Dani Shapiro reader.
The long time readers already knew the missing pieces from past books. ( so it was easy for us)...

I’m not sure if this book is best read as a prequel —or an ‘addition’ to her last memoir, “Inheritance”...
Personally - I think it’s best as an ‘addition’ > to her last book.

Regardless... I love Dani Shapiro...
She’s ruthlessly honest..
and perfectly beautiful exactly the way she is in my book!

A great introspective read!!


4.5 rating up

[TC · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 both what has happened so-far to get her to where she is, and where she winds up going.

There's quite a bit of yiddishkeit here, especially as she kvetches about her mishpocha, so having some familiarity with contemporary Northeastern US Jewish culture would be helpful not only in understanding the yinglish she sprinkles about, but more importantly the subtleties of the dynamics of her family relationships and her own sense of self.

There are times this reads like a Lifetime movie script, but even in its worst moments, it's so well written, with tight and evocative language and lucid candor, it's not eye-rolling as it would have been in lesser hands. Despite the lurid nature of the story, it's told tastefully, without crassness, and never in a way that makes this look even remotely appealing (as some memoirs wind up doing in that "it was fun while it lasted" way that makes you realize the only reason they quit the lifestyle was because it couldn't last).

Instead, my complaints with this book are two-fold: first, these are still the problems of a privileged person. She has the freedom to destroy herself with bad decisions and rebuild herself to greater strength, because she's already pretty high up the needs hierarchy. This isn't her fault, and it never enters her storytelling--she doesn't romanticize the lives of the less fortunate because it all seems so simpler, for example--but I admit it grates me to think, "I wish I had the means to be this screwed up, and survive." I imagine a lot of readers will have this knee-jerk reaction.

Second, the author omitted an important life event from this story that I believe changes its nature: she completely neglects to mention that before the start of the affair that defined this time of her life, she had already been married and divorced while in her late teens. This is easily verified in both her own writings elsewhere, and in engagement and wedding announcements on the New York Times website:

Dani Shapiro plans August wedding; April 1981

Dani Shapiro is married to Daniel Storper, August 1981

She may have found this detail too much to add to the book, because she would have had to describe who Daniel Storper was, how they met, why they married and why they divorced--and we are already instead invested in her relationship with "Lenny." I could see that trying to explain yet another relationship would completely throw off the pacing (which she is so careful to control, that its clear the timelines are occasionally bent a little from reality).

Yet leaving out this important event paints a very different picture of where she was in life when this story started, and shifts the onus of her beginning her inexplicable affair with "Lenny" to some childhood emptiness stemming from her father. That may be, but understanding that it wasn't a straight hop from sad childhood to the arms of someone no one can understand the appeal of, might have helped us better understand her.

Or, at least, it might have helped us better understand this affair. "Lenny" is physically unattractive, self-absorbed, lascivious, uncaring, and pathologically dishonest; all he has going for him is his wealth--but she takes great pains to paint herself as not being a gold-digger. So we're left asking over and over: why? Even she admits towards the end, it makes no sense to others. Perhaps if she hadn't mis-characterized her romantic life at the beginning of this affair as nothing more than having once being "felt-up" by an upperclassman, her four years of self-immolation with "Lenny" would have made more sense. And, I, as a skeptical reader in a post-James-Frey world, might feel a little less unsure of whether what I read was an excellent memoir, or just some well-written creative non-fiction.

With that large caveat, though, it's still an entertaining, and occasionally insightful, read.

[Ellenjsmellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Could not put this down. What a story. Anybody else a Dani Shapiro fan? I'm going to read Picturing the Wreck next.

[Judy · Rating 1 out of 5]

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 introspection, no acceptance or acknowledgement of her own role in the way her life went; just a lot of entitlement to a life that was morally bankrupt.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read all three of Dani Shapiro’s memoirs (four if you count Still Writing, which I do), all out of order, and this, her first, I find is by far the most personal. Since she talks about the accident that killed her father and seriously injured her mother in several of her books, I knew the basics of the story, but this got into the heart-wrenching pain that comes during and following such an incident; her life is now segmented into Before and After (the accident). This book displays her unbalanced life in early adulthood, although hers is even more complicated than the average 20-year-old; a four-year affair with the married stepfather of a close college friend and serious drug and alcohol issues. I found it especially sad to read this book after her latest memoir, Inheritance, when she has discovered her father isn’t her biological father. Her father’s death, based on reading her other memoirs, still haunts her nearly 40 years later, as does her frictious relationship with her mother, fodder for a memoir writer indeed. Shapiro doesn’t shy from the truth (I believe her, although you never know with memoirs), she shares every single ugly thing and thought, sometimes to the point of oversharing. A raw and powerful memoir for those who are fans of Shapiro’s other memoirs.

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been on a Dani Shapiro jag... Ever since I read Hourglass this summer, I've been obsessed. I read Devotion this fall, and now this, which is my fave of hers so far. Her writing is so sharp and vivid. It engages all the senses AND compels you to keep reading to find out what happens next. What else could you want in a memoir, or any book? This is a story of family, growing up, and identity. It reminds me a little of Sweetbitter (can you compare memoir to fiction?? Well, I am). Although I felt way more connected to Shapiro than I did to Tess (the protagonist in Sweetbitter). Maybe I felt an extra surge of love for this book because I, too, was involved with a really toxic guy in my early 20's and I could relate to that aspect of not really understanding why you're doing what you're doing just needing to grow up.

[Joan Winnek · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book redeemed itself. Maybe only a person who has reformed can be so honest about how awful she once was (a person I found highly irritating). Appropriately, the narrative focuses on the parents' accident and the transformation that brought about in the writer. I wish, however, more detail about her return to college and the beginning of her writing career had been included. The denouement of Lenny is given too much weight, after it was such a relief when she finally detached herself from him.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend this memoir All The Time. Because Shapiro is namely a novelist, it's a great study in how to write a memoir with a shape and with drama. I love the voice and the writing in this book.

[Stefanie Onieal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dani Shapiro is one of the best memoirists I’ve read. I’m always amazed at what people are willing to share with the world. It felt like she held nothing back.

[Travel Writing · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can see why a lot of folks are super turned off by this memoir.

It can be really easy to think that money, cars, mink coats, jewelry, Ivy League education, modeling in the 80's, sports cars, traveling on the Concorde like it was public transportation, jet-setting, international travel, and living in posh accommodations in NY would buy you a lot of opportunities to not be such a resounding fuck up.

But even if you removed all of Shapiro's relentless driving home that she is of wealth- you still have a damaged, lonely, sad young woman making a lot of decisions that only cement being damaged, sad, and lonely. Of course, you will still be left her never ending descriptions of her beauty and her snottiness, but let's set that aside for a moment.

She wrote a book about her pain and her lost'ness when she was a young woman. Her mother seemed to care for her only in ways that made the mother look good. There was so much painful inter-family trauma happening that it would be hard for a young girl to find her footing. She is banging the middle aged stepfather of her dearest friend. Then her beloved dad died and it all got worse, as it does.

No amount of money will protect you from not being loved by your parents. No amount of Ivy League education can soothe the hole left in your soul when your mother does not like you. Money can buy you a lot of things, but not your mom's love and acceptance.

That alone makes Shapiro's story heart rendering. Yeah, money can buy you therapy and opportunities, but never the opportunity to have your mom look at you with gentleness and acceptance.

Some quotes I liked:

I file this away somewhere under miscellaneous family insanity.

I always drink on airplanes- I consider them a sort of time free zone, an endless cocktail hut.

Prevention may well be my father's favorite publication, a hypochondriacs version of Playboy.

[Liz Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Shapiro's first memoir (she has written three), she explores the ways in which her parents' car accident, an accident that leaves her father brain-damaged and her mother with 80 broken bones, help to save her from drugs, drink, and a destructive relationship with a much older man. It's a well-written and compelling read. What I can't stop thinking about, however, are Shapiro's words from an interview at the end of the book: "memoir is not...a linear narrative of what happened so much as a document of the moment in which it is written. The present moment acts almost as a transparency, an overlay resting on top of the writer's history. The interplay of these two planes--the present and the past, the 'me now' and the 'me then'--creates the narrative and the voice. One can't exist without the other." That's exactly the magic that all writers of memoir strive to achieve.

[Sarah Hine · Rating 4 out of 5]

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!

[Christopher Rabley · Rating 5 out of 5]

It takes courage to write such a memoir; describe what it is like to lose one's way, get caught in a destructive track, and as well deal with family dynamics and most of all, the devastating loss of her Father. I also like how the author details the insight she gained when her life turned for the better. But most of all, quite simply, I love how this author writes; what she says, how she says it.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[James Winter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read "Hourglass" first, I loved its lyric snapshots of Dani's marriage, and was excited to see what she'd do with a more linear, narrative memoir, her first, in my understanding. "Slow Motion" was more of what I expected from the form, with Dani pulling at various strands of her life when needed as they met with the narrative action, which really drives the book. The scenes with her parents and family are most engaging, are those with Lenny, who I hated from when he first stepped on the page. That he is eventually investigated by the FBI is a sweet ending to the book, although Dani doesn't let her early-twenties-self off the hook either. That, I think, is what drives the secondary narrative, that is, one of self-reclaimation.

Several reviewers have been quite nasty about the book. I don't understand--Dani is hardest on herself. Her privilege and self-absorbtion run parallel to her search for self as well as her need for something meaningful to pursue outside of her family. She is brutal in her introspection. In this sense, she is every twenty-something, and though I didn't grow up in such middle-upper class circumstances, I could relate and appreciate the struggle. For me, that's the book's greatest success, and one that will have me reading it again--not only the faults that make us human, but how we make ourselves human through tragedy.

[Kristin Boldon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read Shapiro's more recent memoirs and had not yet gotten to this, her first. It's good, with some lovely writing and emotionally intense scenes. Understandably, it's not as polished, I delightful or mature as her later books since this is a coming-of-age tale.

[Haley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written, very poetic, amazingly artistic language. A haunting story about the danger of sublimating your self completely to another.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading Dani Shapiro's latest memoir, Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love, I knew I had to read anything else by this author that I could get my hands on. It was disconcerting to read this book, published twenty years before Inheritance, knowing what I know now about her father. Several times in this book, she mentioned inheriting a particular trait from her father, which, we now know, she actually didn't (learned from him, yes; inherited, no). I love the way Ms. Shapiro writes, cleverly, simply, and with heart. She seems to hold nothing back, revealing herself, flaws and all. Since my own father died in a car crash, and hers not long after one, once again I felt a sense of identification and empathy with her as I read this earlier memoir. I certainly never experienced a "Lenny", thank the gods, but I could relate to her heavy partying in her college years and ultimately moving past that and crafting a better life for herself. I will continue to read her books as I now feel a special kinship with this talented author.

[Alyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book at the library because it was one of hers I had not read. As soon as I realized it was about the loss of her father and her younger days she alluded to in other memoirs, I was all in. I so needed a story about grief, family, and losing and finding one's self. She's one of my favorite memoirists.

"These pictures will survive for years to come, and one day, while I am rummaging through her bookcases, a single Polaroid will fall to the floor, and in an instant, time will disappear. I will return to this moment: the harsh winter sun streaming through the tilted venetian slats of her room, the flowers that have begun to pile up everywhere— colorful bunches of peonies, wilted roses, mums, freesia-the clanging inside my head that just won't let up. Since the crash, I have become accustomed to this cacophony. Sometimes I think of it as a voice, other times I imagine it to be pure dissonance, an atonal broken record. I try to drink it away, but drinking only dulls it for a little while, as if it were coming from another room in the same house" (87).

[Jen Brodehl · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Stars- Another great book by Dani Shapiro. I can’t get enough of her and I loved learning about her younger years and what traumas she’s been through. Probably my favorite author ever (plus Colleen Hoover) and I will keep reading all of her books. And then probably start them all over again! She gracefully delivers so much wisdom to her readers and knows just the right words to say. It’s impossible to write how much I love her books!

[Laura Donovan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brutal memoir on losing a parent suddenly in that weird space between childhood and adulthood. Though Dani Shapiro was 23 when her dad died, she was very much a child, and I think the man who preyed upon her knew that before aggressively pursuing her. I lost my own dad at 17 and could relate to the sense of total loss that accompanies such a misfortune.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a novel, I'd rate this a strong 3 stars, maybe even 4. As a memoir? A "true story", as the title page deems it? Ehhhhh, I don't think so. I didn't like that she changed the name of Lenny and of his stepdaughter/ Dani's friend Jess. I really didn't like the fact that she left out the fact of her first marriage and instead implied that she was an innocent naive girl who had never been in a real relationship before Lenny. Uh, what about that wealthy thirty-something guy you married, Dani? It really changes the story arc, knowing she had already been in a relationship with an older wealthy man. The omission bothers me. Sure, a memoir is not a biography but instead one person's description of a certain part of their life. You won't get the unvarnished truth but rather their perception of the truth. However, leaving out huge chunks of your life in order to present an incredibly different version of yourself strikes me as an autobiographical novel and not a memoir.

Shapiro is only a few years older than me but it's like she is from another century. I could not relate to her at all. She lived like a middle-aged woman when she was twenty. It was unsettling how she bypassed the normal cultural touchstones of her generation and instead zoomed straight into the life of a wealthy 45 year old. She jokingly described herself at one point as Ivana Trump and I don't think the comparison is far off. I recently read Bright Lights Big City for the first time and Shapiro seemed to hover on the edge of that crowd, but only hovered. She was not in the "cool crowd" other than sharing the same coke dealer in Soho. I kept having to remind myself that this is the 1980s, not the 1950s. It's like she lived in a vacuum. So, so odd. Instead of hanging out at Danceteria or the Mudd Club or CBGBs, she was hanging out at French restaurants in midtown. In one scene when she goes out with a friend, they go to a jazz club. Uh....why is a 23 year old at a jazz club? Why is she not in the East Village or the Meatpacking district? It's like she completely bypassed her teens and twenties and even early thirties and moved straight from childhood to middle age.

I guess I have to give her props for depicting herself in such a deeply unflattering light. Honestly, she was just awful. So spoiled and inane and self-absorbed. Her mother came across as a deeply unpleasant person as well so like mother, like daughter? I felt bad for her stepsister Susie. What a nightmare having such a stepmother and such a stepsister. Yikes! I kept waiting for a more well rounded picture but that never happened.

I thought she depicted panic attacks and anxiety well. As someone who has suffered both, reading her description of a panic attack was awful in terms of it really placing you into that nightmarish experience. They were well written and the only time I felt any sort of connection to her.

The relationship with Lenny made zero sense, absolutely zero sense. I felt she was not telling the truth. Maybe she isn't aware of the truth? Maybe she can't face that part of herself yet? She repeatedly says she doesn't know why she was with him for four years, although at the end she says she loved him. (Cue my impression of Scooby Doo saying "Huh?!") I saw zero evidence of love or even lust in her story. It truly was a head scratcher. I think she was attracted to his power and his money and he was attracted to her youth and beauty. It was a transactional relationship. Admitting you are willing to sell yourself for money and for the proximity to power is a difficult thing to admit so she doesn't. Instead, she portrays herself as an innocent waif bamboozled by a bad guy.

Random bits I highlighted

Though I don't know this today, I am making a choice. I am choosing not to choose. My mind has gone numb precisely so that I won't understand that somewhere buried deep in this mess there's a right and a wrong.

I've never paid taxes, barely pay bills, don't balance my checkbook. No one has ever told me these are more than annoying little tasks but are, in fact, a necessary part of living.

In my drunken, confused state, Lenny was suddenly appealing. He was Lord of the Manor, bestower of Alfa Romeos, a benign patriarchal figure.

I have been afraid of my mother's temper all my life. When she flies into a rage, she will say anything to anybody. She once called my childhood dentist a pig in front of his whole waiting room because he was late for an appointment.

"It isn't going to be easy, Dani, but I really want us to be friends. There have been a lot of misunderstandings over the years. Your mother ..." She trails off, shaking her head sorrowfully.

My mother always ridiculed their lives as small and pious, and made sure we didn't have anything to do with them. All these years, I never realized that I might be missing something. But now that my father is dead, I see that they are the invisible thread that connects me to him.

My mother's energies, at least regarding me, have been misdirected: intrusive at all the wrong moments, passive when she shouldn't have been. She has been stunningly silent about the important things: my dropping out of college and taking up with Lenny.

It seemed to me, at the age of twenty, that I had already ruined myself.

My other college friends have disappeared - or rather, it is I who have done the disappearing.

When I think of anything that's ever harmed me-cigarettes, alcohol, cocaine, Lenny-they've all had one thing in common: the revulsion, the nausea that l've had to fight past before I could take them in.

My place is spare and weirdly furnished, with the baby grand piano Lenny bought me taking up half the living room, and a big brass bed with white iron bars dominating the bed-room.The closets are stuffed with designer clothes Lenny has bought me over the years, clothes I will one day stuff into giant trash bags and donate to the Salvation Army.

I find myself driving a black Mercedes convertible. And just in case I might be mistaken for anything other than a kept woman, I wear a mink coat, a Cartier watch, a Bulgari necklace with an ancient coin at its center.

We have been to London, Monte Carlo, the Côte d'Azur. I have played blackjack in private clubs with oil sheikhs who asked me to blow on their dice for good luck;I have driven a convertible around the hairpin turns of the Moyenne Corniche; I have eaten langoustine on a boat floating somewhere off the shores of Cap d'Antibes. I wear dark glasses and haute couture suits, a gold watch, and a long, thick strand of pearls.

One drunken night in the near future, I will break my promise to Annette and tell Lenny that she temps for Belzer, Klein, Marchese & Rosenzweig, and he will march down to Personnel and see to it that she is fired.

Annette hands me a mug of tea. She's wearing a pink flannel robe, and I want to be her. I want to have a life where robes and cats and mugs of tea are within the realm of possibility.

I don't, in fact, think of my life as "my life," but rather as a series of random events that have no logical connection.

I want to start my life over again, but I don't know how.

[Callie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give it a four star "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 before this she is not only a kept woman, but also addicted to alcohol and cocaine and has an eating disorder. I am so glad my life is dull and peaceful (knock wood), but I am also so glad other people have crazy lives and write about them!

[Angeld01 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good. Amazing writer. Even though Dani was a mess in this book, and would have been unlikeable in many ways; she writes so well that you have compassion for her imperfections and those around her.

[Becca Crooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved going back to read some of Shapiro's earlier work. I felt transported to her youth with all the heaviness of wayward turns and addiction. She's an excellent memoir-ist and I enjoyed this even more having read Hourglass and Inheritance.

[linnea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adored this memoir.

[Margaret Perkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dani Shapiro has already been an influence on my writing life -- I will always treasure "Still Writing" for its encouragement and realism. But now I'm looking to read her memoirs to understand how they work. This was just a first read for entertainment, but I understand I'll have to read it again for structure, to learn how to identify how it was put together. Overall it was really good - she does a good job of describing the emotions of a younger version of herself without sounding sentimental or bitter, which must be a hard balance to achieve. There are some areas of overlap with my own story that I know I'll want to take a closer look at the next time I read it. It feels pretty effortless, how she tells her own story. It'll be cool to learn from her!

[Kristi Kasper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think the subtitle of this memoir summarizes this book so well, a memoir of a life rescued by tragedy. This tips the reader off as to the magnitude of difficulty in Dani Shapiro’s life. Dani is a young adult in a toxic relationship, she has issues with alcohol and her career is stagnating. Dani’s life is turned upside down when both of her parents are in a horrific car accident. In facing the new reality of her life she has the opportunity to make significant changes and this is the story of that journey. Dani’s writing is captivating and engrossing. I really enjoyed reading this memoir.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I give this one four and a half stars (but always round up). It was fascinating to read this book about her father's death after reading Inheritance, knowing that he is not her biological father. While it was difficult to relate to her actual circumstances, it was not difficult to relate to the tragic moments in life that are catalysts for real change. What struck me most, though, was just what a damn good writer Shapiro really is.