Nonfiction review: The Slippery Year

NONFICTION
Melanie Gideon believes she's sleepwalking through life.

But it's much worse than that: She's paralyzed by a fear of the rogue waves -- both real and metaphoric -- that she's certain will overtake her family.

Never mind that, as she describes her life, she has a loving husband, a well-adjusted 9-year-old son, the means to stay home with him and no reason to expect the worst.

And yet, "I had the sense that darker times were coming -- any fool knows an abundance of light casts a long shadow," Gideon writes in her memoir, "The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After."

Gideon, who lives in California and turned 44 in the year her memoir recounts, says she's telling "how I came to terms with my happily ever after."

Based on that, I expected to read how a woman changed her thinking, changed her life, changed something -- anything! -- to get herself to a better place.

Instead, Gideon gives us 12 self-deprecating essays that describe her anxiety about the next catastrophe looming in her mind. Will it be the camping van, the Halloween costume, the dog, summer camp, therapy?

If her intention is to make us feel better about our own lives, she succeeds. After all, everyone sees the worst from time to time. With her, though, it's all the time.

In one essay, she says it hurts too much to see her son lose at lacrosse -- and, certainly, get hurt -- so she won't go to his games. That means she misses seeing his first goal.

It's so bad to lose, she tells her best friend and her son's lacrosse coach.

Her friend's reply: It's worse not to be in the game

"It's so in-your-face," she tells her husband. "Everybody wanting to win, win, win. Is this what it's like to be a boy?"

His answer: "This is what it's like to be alive."

Even her son sees things clearly: "Why are you always such a pessimist? Why do you always think the sky is falling? Maybe the sky is calling, not falling."

Taken individually, the essays are fine. Gathered into a book, they need to chart change to be effective.

At book's end, we see some small signs that Gideon's learning to live in the moment. She talks of spending the last night of a vacation by walking along the shore with her husband and son.

"We are just as we should be. Our bellies are full with good food and good wine. Our clothes smell of wood smoke, and our hair smells of the sea. Tonight our son adores us."

Then she reminds herself that changes, "low tides," lie ahead. It's clear she thinks they won't be good.

My disappointment with "The Slippery Year" may be of my own creation. I read the book after seeing "Julie & Julia," the story of Julie Powell and Julia Child, women who found their way by mastering the art of French cooking.

My hope for Gideon is that she finds hers, too.

Jann Malone been a writer and editor of newspapers and magazines in Georgia and Virginia for 37 years.