Slow Motion:
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REVIEW BY SUZI PARKER
Life sometimes throws a curve ball. In some instances, you are forced to grow up before it's time. Dani Shapiro experiences this one fateful year. At 23, she doesn't recognize herself anymore. She has become the mistress of a wealthy businessman who treats her to indulgences at spas and expensive shops. She has also fallen victim to the world of drugs in order to escape from a pain rooted in her Orthodox Jewish upbringing. Then, the call comes. Her parents have been in a terrible accident on the snowy roads near her family home. Both are hospitalized, and Shapiro has no time to waste. Upon arrival at the hospital, Shapiro sees her mother in white bandages, a full body cast, legs in traction and stares in fear at what her mother has become. She finds her father in a coma from which, doctors say, he may never emerge. He does, however, miraculously emerge -- only to die weeks later. The fact that Shapiro lost the road map to her life becomes clear after her father's death. As she treks through an emotional journey into the past, she wonders what went wrong. She considers what her life is now: unopened bills, angry letters from her married lover, tiny jars of cocaine and an expired credit card she uses to chop it up. It is at this point that the reader sees Shapiro slipping back into the world in which she grew up. As her mother stays in the hospital and begins to recover, Shapiro, too, vows to get her life in order. Through recounting her pain, Shapiro begins to re-center and move ahead. Success, love, and life's goodness will come with hard work and self-transformation and usually after tragedy has struck on every level. Shapiro, who has written three novels, may have written her best book yet with Slow Motion, an honest and compelling story of a life being sewn back together. Suzi Parker is a freelance writer in Little Rock, Arkansas.
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