The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After

by Melanie Gideon

“We are all so curious. Hungry for the truth. If only we could ask the questions we really want to ask of each other and get the real answers. Like how many times a month do you have sex? What prescription drugs are you on? Are you happy? Really happy? Happy enough?”

For anybody who has ever wondered privately Is this all there is , Melanie Gideon’s poignant, hilarious, exuberant meditation, The Slippery Year, chronicles a year in which she confronts both the fantasies of her receding youth and the realities of midlife with a husband, a child, and a dog (one of whom runs away). She reflects on the exigencies of domesticity—the need for a household catastrophe plan, the fainting spell occasioned by the departure of her nine-year-old son for camp, the mattress wars, and the carpool line. With tenderness, unsparing honesty, and uproarious wit, Gideon brings us back again and again to the sweetness of ordinary pleasures and to life’s most enduring satisfactions. She captures perfectly that moment right before everything changes and the things we have loved forever begin to fall away for the first time.

The Slippery Year is the story of a woman’s quest to reignite passion, beauty, and mystery and discover if “happily ever after” is a possibility after all.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Humor, Biography Memoir, Parenting

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Melanie Gideon is the NYT bestselling author of the memoir, The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After, as well as the novels Wife 22, Valley of the Moon and Did I Say You Could Go. Her books have been translated into thirty languages. She lives in the Bay Area.

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked this book and would give it 2.5 stars. Very quick read, funny, clever, sharp writing (which I like). However, it is NOT what it billed itself to be. It's not one womans quest for anything. It was simply a series of essays from a year of her life. There were a few instances where I thought she might be "going somewhere" with common mid-life issues and then it would end and she wouldn't address it again. So, it could have been so much more but with a funny viewpoint but it didn't happen. A little disappointing but still fun to read.

[Jake Rideout · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not real big on memoirs. My reading tastes tend more toward escapism, which you may have already noted. This memoir, however, I could not put down. Melanie Gideon did not get lost on a mountain climbing expedition (she DID fall off her bike though) or get breast cancer (she scratched her cornea) or leave her marriage and move to Europe (she camped in the driveway, almost). This book is about being a mom and a wife and yourself all at the same time, and keeping your sense of humor, and laughing at yourself, and loving the little things. It doesn't feel indulgent the way some memoirs do, and Melanie is a master at making fun of her own fears and neuroses. You don't have to be a mother or a wife to identify with Melanie--her experiences are ones that everyone will recognize, or wish they did. Bravo. : )

[Janet · Rating 1 out of 5]

I expected a bit more depth from this book based on reviews I read and the general description, but it turned out to be a rather vapid account of one middle class woman's struggle with, among other things, her husband's purchase of a van as part of his mid-life crisis. Disappointing.

[Heidi · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I read the introduction to this book, I was pretty intrigued. It sounded really relate-able, and I'm always interested in stories about marriage and motherhood. However, the book didn't really deliver, although there are some nuggets of profound truth scattered throughout.

[Sarah Obsesses over Books & Cookies · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this. Like other reviewers I'll say that it's a memoir but nothing crazy happens. She's a middle aged woman happily married with a son. We read in chapters named by the month about a year where she describes her coming to terms with life and how she's a little nutty and I think I just completely related to her when she said her family eats dinner standing up very casual, that she doesn't cook and that when her husband asks, has she thought about dinner, she loves that she knows that he means nothing by except has she literally thought about it.
The family dog dies and she has to face letting her son go to camp. It seems so goody-goody yet it was realistic and light but real in another way that didn't have to be dramatic.
I loved wife-22 and wish I had read this before but like all books that I read, this one came to me when I needed and was ready for it.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this all in one sitting, devouring the chapters like chips, because of writing like this:
"There's this strange phenomenon. An hour after you've put your children to sleep, the ways in which you have wronged them sprawl out on your chest, all two hundred and fifty pounds of them, and suck the breath right out of you. It works the same way with gratitude. An hour after your family has left the house, you love them with a piercing intensity that was nowhere to be found when you were scraping egg yolk off their breakfast dishes. Your hope is to one day feel this way about them when they're in the room. This is a pretty lofty goal."
Her voice is true and speaks to me. Loved this.

[Kerri · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't review this without being partial, as the author and I are good friends. With that said, she's a very funny woman and has keen insight to love, laughter, and maturing gracefully...

[Ayelet Waldman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely memoir.

[Trichelle De La Cueva · Rating 4 out of 5]

A light read, not overly engaging or mind blowing. I'd give it 4 stars for the writing and the humor. She was funny and I appreciated the relatable mom/wife/life thoughts and dilemmas.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable reflection written by a 44-year old mother & wife trying to determine what is important in life, and what it means to be happy with the life you find yourself in. It’s her uplifting and funny story of how she deals with her husband’s midlife crisis when he buys an atrocious-looking camper RV that he insists on parking in the driveway of their affluent suburb, or tries to recapture her passionate feelings for this otherwise-practical husband who insists on wearing a safety helmet while surfing, or missing her nine-year old son when he goes off to camp for the first time.

As she says in the introduction, “The Slippery Year is the story of how I come to terms with my happily ever after. It’s a conversation – personal and universal, funny and heartrending – about all the things that matter: children, the Sunday paper, sisters, good-hair days, dogs, love, loss, the passage of time, and all the reasons to go on living even when the only thing we can be sure of is that one day it will all end”.

[Amy Brown (amylikestoreadalot) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this! It's a "mom memoir"...more like a journal of the year her only son is 9. The family is close, but she's seeing the beginning of him becoming more independent. She's wondering if this is all there is to life, and is she truly happy. Her style is funny and easy to read. I feel like I could be her friend, though I did think she was a bit whiny about things and didn't see how lucky she truly was. I think by the end she realized that. Worth a read! I've read quite a few "mom memoirs" lately, and it's interesting to read that all mom feels the same way about many things, thank goodness. And we're all holding on as tight as we can to our kids as they grow and stretch. I wish I could freeze them now at this age!

[Melody · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are times when one reads a memoir written by someone who is entirely other, and one is able to inhabit that person, understand their motivations, and walk away with a certain understanding. This was not one of those times for me. I didn't get Gideon, I was impatient with her foibles, I was annoyed with her attitudes, and I ended up being glad that my only encounter with her was through the pages of this book.

I'm not saying I think she's a bad person, or even a bad writer. I think she's a good writer- she was able to give me a crystal-clear picture of her inexplicably discontented life- the failure to understand or to be sympathetic was entirely mine.

[Clarabel · Rating 3 out of 5]

C'est une lecture sans prétention, fluide, légère, un peu superficielle aussi, on y aborde des sujets aussi délicats que la perte du chien ou le blues d'un mariage quelque peu fané par le temps, mais cela traite aussi de thèmes aussi artificiels que l'achat d'un matelas, des ronflements du mari, des cheveux qui frisent, d'une séance chez le coiffeur qui s'éternise...
Au final, heureusement, l'auteur rappelle que si tout n'est pas parfait ni conforme à ses rêves de jeune fille, sa vie d'aujourd'hui n'est finalement pas si mal, "les ventres sont remplis de bonne nourriture et de bon vin, les vêtements sentent le feu de bois et les cheveux l'océan, les changements sont devant nous".

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I really found the author incredibly tiresome in the beginning, but she increasingly grew on me. I adored the son and husband, but the wife. . . meh. A bit too jokey, a bit too consciously annoying. Nevertheless, it was a well crafted read. And the best kind of book: the kind you devour in one day, a couple subway rides. I can't say I strongly recommend it, but for anyone who needs to take themselves a little less seriously and read something more substantial than a self-help magazine article, go for it.

[Elizabeth Newell · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is another one of those books, a bit like _Helping me help myself_, Hyperchondriac and _Up for Renewal_, where there are some very funny parts, but the author also portrays themselves as so dysfunctional you just want to smack them. Why is it that I keep finding these books, often written by local women no less, that tell the story of educated people who can't manage to clean their toilet more than once a year, or, in the case of this book, make their 9 year old bathe regularly? Maybe they are exaggerating for humor, but if so, it falls flat and just comes across as pathetic and whiney.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a big fan of the memoir-of-a-normal-person genre. This one was sweet and enjoyable and a good use of a couple of hours of your time, but it didn't deliver what was promised. The reviews led you to believe that Gideon woke up from her sheltered, maybe-too-comfortable life and started taking risks again. This did not happen, but she did write some funny and endearing essays on being a 40-something California mom.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gave up on this one, after too many more-of-the-same chapters. The author has an appealing writing style and I feel as if I'd like her personally, but the book is a grab bag of her experiences with theoretically are organized around some sort of being-present theme, but really are just shoved together in amusing but insubstantial essays.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great memoir about a 40-something woman's ordinary life - made me LOL several times on my recent DC trip! Her description of divorced (p. 137) is so right on target, I wish I'd written it myself.

[Dana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book. In so many ways she puts into words what all of us think from time to time. I appreciate her keeping it real. I laughed and cried.

[Christine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very annoying main character that is way too self involved

[Karie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Slippery Year” caused me no end of embarrassment. When I was reading it outside of my office building one afternoon, I must have looked like a complete idiot. From my shoulders shaking as I tried to disguise my laughter to having to wipe my eyes every so often, I must have looked like a person who’d completely lost control.

OK – I realize how hyperbolic that last sentence was – but this book was really funny!!! Laugh out loud, snorting and crying funny. Granted, my life is pretty similar to that of author Melanie Gideon, but I still think anyone with a sense of humor would enjoy this book.

“Yes, we are stupid people that live at the top of a Canyon. Yes, we live in the Oakland Hills, and yes, these are the same Oakland Hills that were ravaged in the Oakland Hills Firestorm of 1991 that at its peak destroyed one house every eleven seconds. But not our hill. Not our canyon. That is what I say when Mr. Fire Captain comes to dinner.”

“He shakes his head and says, ‘If there’s a fire just get out.”

“Out to where?” I ask.”

“Just grab Ben and run down the street.”

“Well, run where?”

“Away from the ________ fire,” he says. “Is there something wrong with you?”

There’s nothing wrong with Gideon. She’s like most of the other mothers, wives, women I know. In this book, subtitled “A Meditation on Happily Ever After”, the worry, love, despair, exhaustion and joy of life come shining through.

Her humor is very self-deprecating and she rarely hides that which she considers her flaws. Though at times she doubts herself as a wife and mother, the fierce love that she feels for her family blazes through. In fact, I am realizing as I write this, that I marked far more touching passages than funny ones, even though I started off this review by mentioning the humor.

“There’s this strange phenomenon. An hour after you’ve put your children to sleep, the ways in which you have wronged them sprawl out on your chest, all two hundred and fifty pounds of them, and suck the breath right out of you. It works the same way with gratitude. An hour after your family has left the house, you love them with a piercing intensity that was nowhere to be found when you were scraping egg yolk off their breakfast dishes. Your hope is to one day feel this way about them when they’re in the room. This is a pretty lofty goal.”

And, “Do you know sometimes when you look at your kid and it’s like his face has run away? Suddenly he no longer belongs to you? And for a moment you can imagine him free in the world, living, loving and dying without you ever knowing him? Without you ever having spoken one true thing to him?”

Balanced with things like this anecdote about her 9-year old son at the airport:

“You go first,’ I whisper to Ben. “And try and act normal.”

“He hesitates and I give him a little shove and he scampers through the metal detector, looking both terribly guilty and terrified, as if he’s about to be zapped with 1,000 volts of electricity.”

“Phew,’ he says, having made it through.”

“He would make a very bad drug mule.”

Gideon certainly speaks my language…sarcastic, ironic, funny and intensely loving. Her reflections on marriage, motherhood and being a sister and a friend truly hit home. She does all this in a way that made me laugh…and then catch my breath when she says something that strikes right to the heart of human relationships.

“I look at my husband and I see him. I mean I really see him. Something falls away, and all the men he’s been in the years I’ve known him pulse beneath the surface of his face: the twenty-four-year-old who so staggered me with his animal grace, the thirty-three-year-old father tenderly cupping the head of his newborn son, the forty-year-old who taught himself to surf because he needed a new challenge; he needed a religion.”

Last thing? On the funny? When you get to the part about “The Ninemandments”? Either go somewhere private or grab some Kleenex. Trust me.

[Guy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a quick read and painless. And I was disappointed. I had hoped that the meditation would have been deeper, more like what I imagine a meditation to be. And although Slippery was classified by the library — I found this at my local library's book sale — as fiction, it read as a memoir and the author's opening note aligns with that: "Some names have been changed to protect identities. In a few instances timelines have been compressed."

Gideon, writes with candor about her shortcomings, and her musings are sometimes fresh and interesting. And her self-deprecating humour was fun in the beginning, but quickly for me became heavy, cloying, perhaps even a bit self-indulgent.

I wish I could tell you what we discussed, that it was a lively conversation, that I was triumphant in inspiring my audience, that an audience that filled mare than the first four rows of shares was there to hear it. Instead I was in my own private hell, listening through the skimpy walls to the hundreds of people in Salon A roaring with laughter and clapping wildly. I cursed myself for being such a fool. Could my B team status be any clearer? Sure, the B was tarted up with Salon, but it was B all the same. Halfway through the panel a group of women wandered into our room, and my heart lifted. Here finally was the crowd: a little late, maybe thee was a long line in the ladies' room? But very quickly these women realized they had mistaken Salon B for Salon A and high-tailed it out of there (p106-7).

And yet I felt like I had indulged in something pleasant but without much nutrition. I was hoping for some insight and perhaps wisdom. What I felt I got was some clever quips and a few interesting observations.

Three stars.

[Meredith Hines-Dochterman · Rating 3 out of 5]

So ... This is one of those books where the description on the inside cover says one thing, but the content itself is something totally different, and even though Melanie Gideon's essays are well-written with moments of absolute clarity and truth, I was expecting to read about a 40-something mother rediscovering herself and life after having one of those "What am I doing?" moments in the school's carpool lane.

Those moments always happen in carpool lanes. Or after leaving the grocery store. The mundane has a way of making us reflect.

So Gideon never really changes her life, or decides everything is awesome and she should just stop First World Problem everything. This collection of essays is just that: a collection of essays. The only connection to the book's title is that they're organized by month. I would have liked it more had it actually addressed what she wrote about in the foreword.

[Jo Schaarschmidt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I kept waiting for the part where she learned something

A charmingly written memoir by a woman who has an adoring husband, a perfect son, friends, family, money and privilege. She suffers from crippling anxiety that she chooses to do nothing about. She smothers her son, ignores here husband, failed to show up for her friends, and in the end finds some peace on an annual family vacation that goes well. Anyone who has ever dealt with poverty, trauma, or loss (so nearly everyone) will want to bop this woman in the nose.

[Steve Majerus-Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this reluctantly, mostly to glean some information about Melanie Gideon's younger sister, a U.S. Senate candidate in Maine. But the book turned out to be a sweet, well-written, sometimes funny slice of life of mom grappling with life. It's pretty good.

[Efrat Marcu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the honesty in the book! I don't know if it's fictional or autobiographical but it felt real and relatable even though we have quite different lives I guess she hit some universal truths about women in their 40s :)

[Fayette · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a quick fun read about a middle aged woman trying to sort out what's important in life.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. Heartbreakingly accurate.

[Cyndy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not quite what I expected but it was a quick, OK read

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure of the point of this book. I liked the main character, but I didn't like the story...or lack there of.