Devotion: A Memoir
Release date: 2010 / 243 pages
Synopsis (from the back cover): Settling into the responsibilities and routines of adulthood, Dani Shapiro found herself with more questions than answers. Was this all life was — a hodgepodge of errands, dinner dates, e-mails, meetings, to-do lists?…
First Sentence: A woman named Sandra was cradling my head in her hands.
Review: This memoir is so generous — and I was so primed to read it — that this review will be unavoidably subjective. Before I began composing, half-a-dozen paths unfolded… but each with the singular focus of exploring my own spiritual journey, rather than reviewing Shapiro’s record of her own. However, I think this may be one of the great gifts of Devotion — it beckons, invites, even commands the reader to explore what “God” means in his or her own life just as Shapiro does in her memoir.
In many respects, I was truly the perfect reader for Devotion. The allusions and spiritual guides Shapiro references include some of my favorite poets and thinkers: Grace Paley, (who taught me the power of a single sentence: “He had a habit throughout the twenty-seven years of making a narrow remark which, like a plumber’s snake, could work its way through the ear down the throat, halfway to my heart. He would then disappear, leaving me choking with equipment.”), Rilke (who taught me to “live the questions“), and Jack Kornfield (“this too, this too, this too“), to name a few. What resonates deeply within Shapiro strikes a chord within myself.
She, too, has a tendency to worry, to create anxiety where there is none. While my own stems from the unexpected death of my younger brother, her legacy includes the near-death of her son when he was an infant. We react similarly to the unknown: white-knuckling situations despite our better judgement.
We are also only a few years apart — just beginning middle-age — and still coming to terms with what lies ahead. Both of us are in blessedly, profoundly happy marriages, have chosen a rural existence after a largely urban young adulthood, are in love with language, struggle to sit still long enough to meditate, but love yoga…
On the other hand, we have many, many differences, too. She did not ever have an easy relationship to her mother, her Jewish upbringing defines and disrupts her identity, she was an only child, and motherhood has sharpened and clarified much of her existence…
So many passages rose to greet me throughout this memoir, which I read with my 7 month puppy asleep in my lap:
The Sanskrit word for devotion is bhakta. It comes from the verbal root bhaj, which is defined as: (1) distributed, allotted, assigned; (2) divided; (3) served, worshipped; (4) engaged; (5) attached or devoted to, loyal, faithful; (6) dressed, cooked (as in food); (7) forming a part of, belonging to; (8) loved, liked…
I wasn’t getting any closer to a personal relationship with God. It didn’t occur to me to ask God questions, or to expect answers. We weren’t really on speaking terms. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, I heard and beheld God in every object, yet understood God not in the least. And increasingly, that was okay. I didn’t need to understand. Who was I, to understand?
We are always adapting to new circumstances. We think we’ve found an answer that we can carry with us for our whole lives — and then it turns out that the questions themselves have changed.
I thought, then, of the first words I had ever heard Sylvia speak: The whole world is a lesson in what’s true. The whole world is a lesson — and the lesson keeps changing.
Jung defined midlife as over the age of thirty-five. I know people who don’t consider themselves middle-aged at fifty. It doesn’t really matter, except in this regard: however we think of ourselves, we are in the center of the stream. Much has already happened, and has formed the shape of our lives as surely as water shapes rock. Much lies ahead of us. We can’t see what’s coming. We can’t know it. All we have is our hope that all will be well, and our knowledge that it won’t always be so. We live in the space between this hope and this knowledge.
So, I cannot present an objective review of this lovely memoir since it was so well-suited to my life at this moment. Devotion may be too introspective for some, not linear enough for others, but I do recommend it as a gift that may arrive at just the right time in many people’s lives.
Interested in winning a free copy? Drop me a comment below and I will choose a lucky winner by the weekend!
Interested in other, hopefully more objective reviews? Check out other stops on this tour:
Tuesday, February 8th: Chefdruck Musings
Wednesday, February 9th: Kelly’s Lucky You!
Thursday, February 10th: Book Club Classics!
Monday, February 14th: {Mis}Adventures of an Army Wife
Tuesday, February 15th: Books Lists Life
Wednesday, February 16th: nomadreader
Tuesday, February 22nd: Coffee and a Book Chick
Wednesday, February 23rd: Colloquium
Thursday, February 24th: The 3 R’s: Reading, ‘Riting, and Randomness
Friday, February 25th: Books in the City
Monday, February 28th: English Major’s Junk Food
Tuesday, March 1st: she reads and reads
Tuesday, March 1st: The House of the Seven Tails
Wednesday, March 2nd: Boarding in My Forties
Thursday, March 3rd: Man of La Book
Ooh I am dying to read this one!
Oh my goodness – I have to read this one! Please add me to the giveaway list:)
Definitely sounds like a book I’d like to read. Please enter me. Thanks!
I find memoirs fascinating and would love to read this one!
I thoroughly enjoy your website and the kind thoughtfulness with which you review ebooks. I’ve recently downloaded “Devotion” to my Nook and was glad to see your review about it.
Oh, this really resonantes with me, particularly at this time. I am caregiver to my husband and it is very intense trying to work and do that too. It brings up questions in my mind that are not yet resolved. This sounds like a book for me. I have tried for several of your giveaways and have just about given up on trying for any more, but this one is special.
It’s it fantastic when the perfect book comes to us at the perfect time?! It certainly seems that this was that kind of book for you so I’m very glad you were able to part of the tour. Thanks so much! I hope your next read is as good of a fit for you as this one was.
I’m so excited to read this for the tour after reading your review!