Devotion: A Memoir

I was very disappointed in this book. I have read many of her short stories in magazines but this book simply got on my nerves. The endless discussion of the author agonizing over every little thing literally set my teeth on edge. I don't think she ever got anything resolved by the end of the book. I rarely give books away but this one I did.

This book came at the perfect time in my life! I am a forty something divorced professional woman with an incredibly busy life. I have been successful in my career, am a passionate animal rescue volunteer, stay active physically, have many interests, and enjoy spending time with family and friends. My friends have commented, "I don't know where you get the energy to do all of the things you do" or "You are the busiest person I know" and more recently, "What are you running away from?" I have lived most of my adult life trying to figure out who I am. I think "Devotion" resonated so deeply with me because Dani Shapiro articulates so beatifully what this search has been like for her. Some of my favorite quotes: "It was a lesson. I needed to learn over and over again: to stop and simply be. To recognize these moments and enter them - with reverance and an unprotected heart - as if walking into a cathedral." "I grew calmer, but beneath the calm was a deep well of loneliness I hadn't known was there. No wonder I had been running as hard and as fast as I could! Anxiety was my fuel. When I stopped, it was all waiting for me: fear, anger, grief, despair and that terrible, terrible loneliness........I was lonely for myself."

I was swept away by this book from the very beginning, yet it took me a full week to read its 243 pages. As much as I wanted to race through and see what became of Dani Shapiro's quest for a deeper experience of life, I couldn't get past more than a couple of pages at a time without putting the book down and becoming lost in my own thoughts. The author and I came from very different places. Couldn't be more different, probably, unless one of us had sprung from another planet. She: Only child, New York City, orthodox Judaism, apparent wealth, a devout father, a distant and cold mother. Me: Youngest of five children, Arizona, Baptist, little money, dependable father, loving mother who greeted us after school with cookies and milk. Yet we ended up in much the same place, wondering why, with every good reason to be happy and (nearly) carefree, we tend to dwell on the dark bits. For my part, I blamed genes passed down from my mother and her father, and what I called our "dour Irish roots." I envied people who seemed to coast through life with aplomb, always making the best of every situation. I asked my mother, "Why must I be the way I am? Why can't I be one of those people who wakes up in the morning with 'a smile on my face for the whole human race' and be confident and optimistic?" My mother said, "Oh, those people! The first time they are hit with real trouble, they crumble! Whereas we already expect the worst, so we're prepared!" My dad was one of those cheerful types, who woke up annoyingly happy and couldn't understand why Mom and I worried so much. Whenever anyone in our extended family or circle of friends was known to be flying somewhere, we worried until we knew the plane had arrived safely. Nobody we knew was ever in a plane crash. My father said this meant all our worrying was for nothing. My mother and I were convinced that only our active worrying kept those planes from falling out of the sky. But I digress. I'm making this review all about me, which, after all, is what I'm trying to say about this book. Nearly every page sent me on an inner journey, and I recalled people and events I hadn't thought of for years. This is a brave story, searingly honest and true. There is a great deal of sadness in it, yet in the end, it's not a sad tale. There are revelations, insights, and a measure of redemption, but it is not a triumphant story. It is a story of love and pain, of believing and not believing, of searching, and finding not answers, but more questions. This is the rare book that will keep working on me long after I've closed its covers.

This book is inevitably compared to Eat Pray Love, but in many ways it is more inspiring. Dani Shapiro did not have the option of traveling the world to discover the essence of faith. She stayed home with her family, dug deep inside, and also explored the religious practices of others in her community. Dani's situation speaks to me personally. On the surface she seems to be doing very well, but inside she is being eaten up by anxiety and fear, searching for answers even if she cannot quite find the right questions. Also, like many women today, she grew up in a religious home but fell away from her religion as an adult. I found her journey to be very moving. She does find a few answers but more importantly becomes more comfortable in her quest. She does find some wonderfully empathic teachers. Having grown up in a rather conservative Jewish family (forgive me, I am not Jewish so maybe I have the terminology wrong), Dani recognizes that she can't embrace Judaism wholeheartedly as her family members do, but she finds the parts that give her comfort. There are any number of memoirs today in which things "happen" to the author, and the author deals with those happenings. Devotion is more than that, and a more courageous memoir. Dani Shapiro has to focus on her reactions to the things that have happened to her, to internal rather than external events, and find a way to cope before she is blown apart. This book is quiet, funny and touching. I want to stay in touch with Dani Shapiro and read future chapters of her story. This is a book I will reread in the future. Highly recommended.

When we meet Elizabeth Gilbert on the first page of Eat, Pray, Love, it's three in the morning, and she's on the bathroom floor of her country house, sobbing. And not for any obvious reason. Career, marriage, health --- she's got it all. When we meet Dani Shapiro on the first page of Devotion, she's been "waking up in a cold sweat nearly every night, my heart pounding. I paced my house, worried about ...well, about everything." Like some of you, I am sick to death of the marketing of Elizabeth Gilbert. And, like many of you, I often find myself waking up in the middle of the night, terrified for my child, our country, our planet. So after a page of Dani Shapiro's book, I don't think you can fault my lack of sympathy for this happily married mother with seven books to her credit. Okay, lady, I think, what's your problem? Dani Shapiro reveals her issue as a story. She's doing "Master Level Energy Work" with a woman named Sandra when Sandra asks, "Are you feeling...pushed?" Just so. "I often felt a sense of tremendous urgency, as if there was a whip at my back. I was fleeing something --- but what?" "It's your father," Sandra says. "Your father apologizes." What's happening here defies everything Dani believes, "but I had entered a place beyond belief." So Dani tells Sandra about her father, who died when she was young: "Everything I am --- everything I've become since that day --- is because of him. Because I had to make his death mean something." "Your father is asking if you want him to stay," Sandra says. "Yes," Dani says, weeping. And, so, on page four, was I, because Dani's situation is very close to that of a woman I know well, and suddenly I could see exactly where this memoir was headed, and that my reading of it would be painful, but at the end, I would find "Devotion" to be the one book that anyone over, say, 35, needs to read right now. I met Dani Shapiro once. She was so blonde I assumed she had been born Dani Wasp and had married a man named Shapiro. Not so. Her father was an old school Orthodox Jew. Her mother, however, was "a brilliant atheist." The mix canceled religion out for Dani: "I had reached the middle of my life and knew less than I ever had before." Nothing was the matter --- but she often felt "on the verge of tears." She felt her life speeding by, "mired in domesticity," and she wanted to slow it down and find some meaning. She had a glimpse of how that might feel by doing yoga, but those classes merely scratched the surface. She needed a deeper dive. My antennae go up again. Oh, I think, this is the philosophical version of The Happiness Project. And, again, I come to see I'm wrong; this is a writer's book, artfully constructed. Shapiro doesn't hit the reader over the head with the fact that her son was born with a condition that kills 85% of its victims. Or that her mother was an unhappy, competitive bitch who basically hated her. Or how her post 9/11 move from Brooklyn to rural Connecticu