Why You Simply Need to Read Devotion by Dani Shapiro

It's not every day that I pick up a memoir and find myself hooked to its pages as though deep in conversation with a good friend, but that's exactly what happened as I read Devotion by Dani Shapiro. She wrote so honestly, and so beautifully about her life and her questions about faith that I simply could not put the book down. I found myself nodding as I read, at times hearing echoes of my own thoughts, disagreeing other times, but still completely understanding where the author was coming from. I spoke about the book to my husband, to my sister, to my friends, to anyone who would listen.

Dani Shapiro is a novelist and magazine writer. She lives in rural Connecticut with her husband and elementary aged son. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Elle, Vogue and O, just to name a few. Her childhood was spent in the rhythms of Orthodox Judaism, but, after living through 9/11 with a toddler in Brooklyn, she flees to rural Connecticut, to a house on 10 acres surrounded by pretty white churches.

As her son enters elementary school, she fields an increasing amount of "mommy-needs-to-get-it-right questions" about God. Increasingly, Shapiro feels ill-prepared to answer them, and finds herself in a mid-life existential crisis. "Even as the words came out of my mouth, they felt inadequate. I was a phony. Play-acting the part of the spiritually inclined, or at least Jewishly-inclined, wife and mother."

Her feelings of inadequacy begin to color her life, tainting the most perfect moments. "Nothing, absolutely nothing, I could put my finger on was the matter. Except that I was often on the verge of tears. Except that it seemed that there had to be more than this hodgepodge of the everyday. ... Inside each joy was a hard kernel of sadness, as if I was preparing myself for impending loss."

Having wrestled to define our family's relationship with faith and organized religion, I strongly identified with Shapiro's self-doubt, and I appreciated her honesty. She lays out the memoir like a mosaic of her life. Interweaving beautifully written chapters about her childhood, her son's terrifying illness in infancy, her relationship with her father's large Orthodox family, and the horror of the collapse of the Twin Towers with her adult explorations of mediation and Judaism.

Although the comparison to Eat, Pray, Love is tempting, I found Devotion to be much more personal, and relatable. In fact, when Shapiro is offered a dream assignment to travel to India to write a feature on meditation, she declines the assignment, explaining to the editor that her personal journey is close to home. And so, instead of delighting us with tales of bowls of Italian pasta, stark prayer in India, and lush landscapes in Bali, she takes the reader on an intimate and no less fascinating journey through her life, finally embracing the beauty of change and the joy of living in the moment.

This review of Devotion is part of a TLC book tour. My review is much later than many of the others because I wanted to take my time and really digest this special book. My copy is already ear-marked and covered with underlined passages. This is a book that I want to keep near me as I know I'll be referring back to it often.