"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.
From the Hardcover edition.
Excerpts
From the book...
SeptemberWhenever my husband casually says, "Hey, hon, come take a look at this Web site," I know it's going to cost me. All of our largest purchases have been preceded by my being summoned to his computer in this manner. So when he says this a few weeks before his birthday, I knew it's really going to cost me, and I don't mean just financially.
"Check this out," he says, pointing. "Isn't it cool?"
I glance at the Ford E-350 on his screen. It looks like the sort of vehicle that shuttles retirees to the local mall. "Kind of," I reply.
He frowns and says, "It's not just any old van. It's a camper. It would be perfect for us. You said you wanted to see the West."
I do want to see the West, in theory anyway. In fact, seeing the West was one of the reasons we moved with our nine-year-old son, Ben, to California. But travel takes so much planning, and as I've gotten older I'm increasingly less willing to tolerate discomfort: the crowds, the traffic, everybody trying to reach the same place at the same time.
His fingers pound at the keyboard. "It's got captain's seats."
"What's a captain's seat?"
"That means it's very, very comfortable."
"Nice," I say, getting back to my book.
Ten minutes later, he says, "I'm going to get one for us."
"Us?" I say.
"Yes, us--you know, you and me?"
The subtext being: Aren't you lucky you married a man who wants to buy a family van as his midlife-crisis vehicle instead of a Porsche Carrera GT?
The good news is he finds a used van. The bad news is it's in South Dakota. So he pays somebody to fly to South Dakota, pick up the van and drive it back. "It's an amazing deal," he says. "It only has fifteen thousand miles on it, and the woman is a motivated seller." Once the van is on its way, my husband tells me the truth. The woman was not the original owner; her son was, or had been. He bought the van to go kayaking in the most untouched places. Then one day he went out in his boat and never returned. This van delivered him to his death. And now his heartbroken mother had sold it to us.
"You have to give it back," I tell him. "He died in it."
"He didn't die in it. He died in his kayak."
"Well, he might as well have died in the van," I say. "He was in the van right before he died."
My husband sighs.
I want him to be happy, us to be happy. It seems every day we hear that another couple has decided to call it quits. More often than not in our circle, the wife leaves the husband. When talking divorce with these women--mothers, like me, of schoolage children--we speak in a shorthand that ricochets around in my head like the rhymes of Dr. Seuss.
They say: Feeling dead. Dead in bed. Too much snore. There's got to be more.
I say: Turn his head. His head in bed. You'll have no more. No more snore.
Now, there are plenty of good reasons to end a marriage, but each time I hear of another impending divorce I can't help but reevaluate my own marriage. Do I want more? Does he? And how do I know if what I have is enough?
When the van finally arrives, I realize it is not the same as the one in that first picture I saw on the Web site. This is no ordinary van for transporting the elderly. It's a 4x4 Rock Crawler version, with tinted windows, a roof rack and a camper extension that explodes out the top. Built to climb rock gorges and traverse rivers, our van also features on its front bumper a cattle-guard contraption that must have been handy when plowing through herds of wildebeests in the Serengeti but is presumably unnecessary in the suburbs.
As I circle the van, trying to hide my shock,...
Reviews
Donna Seaman, Booklist...
"As Gideon discerns the ludicrous and the miraculous within the precincts of the sweetly ordinary, she unleashes a refreshingly piquant literary wit. . . . There is nothing contrived, trite, or holier-than-thou in this crisply hilarious, candid, and affecting contemplation. Instead, Gideon's self-depreciating and wry insights into the mysteries of marriage, parenthood, and the evolution of the self are astute, pragmatic, and generous, providing the perfect antidote to the everyday blues."
Lisa Shea, Elle...
"Gideon explores her pain, doubt, regret, and confusion as a wife and mother at midlife with great poise and insight and, ultimately, a gentle aura of hope."
Allison Pearson, Author of I Don't Know How She Does It...
"Like all the best books, The Slippery Year reminds us that we are not alone--not alone in our fears about our kids, not alone in our struggle to make meaning of our lives, and most definitely not alone in our volcanic rages about the car pool line. Melanie Gideon is a wonderful companion--smart, rueful and painfully funny. Truly, the one thing wrong with this book is that it had to end."
Po Bronson, author of NutureShock...
"Ever wonder what's running through your wife's mind? Read The Slippery Year. Gideon has an utterly charming way of turning the constant compromises of married life into riotous poetic insight."
Julia Scheeres, author of Jesus Land...
"Funny, wrenching and spot-on. Gideon weaves a kind of magic here, polishing the days until they gleam like gold."
Ayelet Waldman author of Bad Mother, a Chronicle of Maternal Crimes Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace...
"In this marvelous memoir Ms. Gideon appears to be channeling everything I've ever felt, thought, feared, hoped about motherhood."
Elinor Lipman, author of The Family Man and Then She Found Me...
"Within hours of finishing The Slippery Year, I was raving to friends about its perfect balance of gorgeous writing, quirky wit, and lovable impertinences. I laughed and cried and saw myself in Melanie Gideon's chronicle of maternal neuroses and wifely doubts. What a pleasure to find such a dear and funny book."
Giulia Melucci, author of I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti...
"With courage, poignancy, and abundant hilarity, Melanie Gideon explores the ambivalence that inevitably surfaces when we choose to stick it out with the loves of our lives. Readers with find themselves laughing out loud and nodding with recognition as they slide through The Slippery Year."
Tom Barbash, author of The La...
"Melanie Gideon has reinvented the coming-of-age story, and done so with self-deprecation, intelligence, and wit. Gideon's writing reminded me of the best of Nick Hornby, at turns sweet, then dark, then almost desperate for connection. Despite all obstacles she finds it, within her family, and surely now with scads of readers. The Slippery Year is a terrific book."
About the Author
Melanie Gideon was born and raised in Rhode Island. She now lives in the Bay Area with her husband and son.
