Slow Motion: A True Story

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Dani Shapiro was rescued by tragedy. At the age of 23 she is a wreck. A Sarah Lawrence college dropout, she is living as the mistress--one of many, she would later find out--of her best friend's stepfather, Lenny, a high-profile New York City lawyer. It is the height of the excessive '80s, and Lenny goes to extravagant lengths to keep his woman--putting her up in a large downtown apartment, draping her in furs and flashy gems, and spiriting her away by Concorde to Paris for weekend flings. When she isn't with Lenny, Shapiro leisurely courts an acting and modeling career and actively pursues her drug dealer, who delivers cocaine to her door. She is at an expensive spa in California--at a far remove from the middle-class, orthodox Jewish home in which she was raised--when, one snowy night, her parents' car careens into a highway median. When she returns to New Jersey, to her parents' hospital bedsides, she begins the journey to discover and mine her inner strength. She succeeds, and though the process is as arduous as it is painful, Shapiro finds within herself the power to nurse her mother through nearly 100 broken bones, to survive her father's death, and to reset the course of her life. Slow Motion ends where its subject's troubles began: with Shapiro, newly single, re-enrolling as an undergrad at Sarah Lawrence.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

SYNOPSIS

A harrowing, exquisitely written memoir of an unforgettable journey deep into the soul.

FROM THE CRITICS

Lily Burana

Growing up is an ambiguous concept and, in many cases, a seemingly arbitrary process. Rarely is the call to maturity as blatant and sudden as the events that jerked writer Dani Shapiro out of the last vestiges of her meandering girlhood. In her new memoir, Slow Motion, the author of the novels Playing With Fire, Fugitive Blue and Picturing the Wreck details the events surrounding the car accident that landed her parents in the intensive care unit, forcing Shapiro to bring her own life into sharp focus.

Memoirs by the young are something of a gamble -- often the writers have neither the self-awareness nor the quantity (or quality) of life experience to warrant a book-length exploration. Slow Motion is the exception that proves the rule. As a pretty, pampered young girl from an Orthodox Jewish family living in northeastern New Jersey (the part of New Jersey the jokes come from, she writes), Shapiro grew up feeling torn between her parents, her religion and a desire for freedom from its constraints, and the rewards of developing her intellect vs. cruising by on her abundant beauty. Prior to the accident, she was a Sarah Lawrence student who took up with her best friend's married stepfather, Lenny Klein, a flashy attorney who dolled her up in couture suits, trotted her around the world and showered her with lies and lavish gifts. She traded in college for the gilded cage, dropping out of school to pursue her acting, her ambivalence-ridden mistressing and her drinking. These events, and those that occur after the accident, are presented with the artful structure and language of a novel and the absorbing pace and intriguing details (running through the airport in her mink coat; tossing back screwdrivers on a lunch break from her hospital vigil; hiring a private investigator to track the activities of Lenny) of a true-crime thriller.

At its finest, Shapiro's writing has the spare elegance of a thin, gold bracelet -- with all the timeless appeal and fine craft that implies. The moment when she wheels her father in to see her mother for the first time since the accident is absolutely heart-rending, yet devoid of melodrama. Her self-examination is stark and untainted by self-pity, as during a boozy appraisal of a businessman during the plane ride to her parents' bedside: "The whole notion of physical beauty has grown increasingly important to me as my intellectual curiosity has vanished ... I have used myself as a physical instrument, slicing my way through the world with nothing but youth, long legs, and long blond hair. At times I think I have chosen the easy way, but every once in a while I realize that this may be the hardest way of all."

Even as the tragedy brings out the very worst in Shapiro's family, it ultimately brings out the best in her. Eventually, Shapiro decides to tend her own garden instead of being an exotic bloom, artfully arranged for display, then left to wilt in substance-addled oblivion. A great piece of writing and an inspirational tale for those who would consider trading substance for surface, Slow Motion illuminates the rocky road to integrity and maturity in graceful but wrenching steps. -- Salon

New Yorker

When this memoir opens, the future novelist is a 23-year-old college dropout, an occasional actress, an alcoholic who uses cocaine, and the mistress of a flamboyant lawyer who is the stepfather of a former college classmate. This is a bizarre predicment for the daughter of rich Orthodox Jews, and, in spare, unflinching prose, Shapiro tells us how she worked her way out of a life of pointless degradation.

Vanessa V. Friedman - Entertainment Weekly

The author remains notably free of self-pity and rigorous in her scrutiny. . .yet there's emotion on these pages that is rare among the recent spate of confessionals.

Library Journal

Successful novelist Shapiro (Picturing the Wreck, Doubleday, 1996) details the tumult and rebirth she experienced in early adulthood, illustrating how one tragedy can prevent another from happening. Things didn't look good when, relying on drugs and alcohol to drive her through life, Shapiro dropped out of college to become an actress and continue her love affair with her best friend's stepfather, a flashy New York attorney. Then, a tragic car accident that left both her parents in critical condition supplied a much-needed impetus for change. As Shapiro nursed her parents, she rebuilt her own life, eventually returning to college, establishing herself as a writer, and embracing the traditional Orthodox Jewish upbringing she had previously rejected. This absorbing story, written with humor and honesty, is a good choice for sophisticated young adults. [This book was excerpted in the August 24/31, 1998 issue of The New Yorker.--Ed.]--Joyce Sparrow, Oldsmar Lib., FL

The New Yorker

When this memoir opens, the future novelist is a 23-year-old college dropout, an occasional actress, an alcoholic who uses cocaine, and the mistress of a flamboyant lawyer who is the stepfather of a former college classmate. This is a bizarre predicment for the daughter of rich Orthodox Jews, and, in spare, unflinching prose, Shapiro tells us how she worked her way out of a life of pointless degradation.Read all 7 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

A superb book by a true storyteller that reads like a novel. It's the kind of book that makes you want to hug your loved ones today, right now, while you still can. — James McBride

Beautifully written, intellectually aware, absorbing and a delight to read...the page-turning suspense of a spy thriller. — Phillip Lopate

Her story is provocative, tender, funny and horrible, and she offers it boldly in this luminous memoir, written with cinematic urgency and narrative grace. — Julie Salamon