Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After

Have you ever sat across the breakfast table from your husband and wondered, 'How did I get here?' Do the things that once made you complete - including your husband - now feel like a burden? Is the life you are leading an unrecognisable version of the one you imagined for yourself not so very long ago? Welcome to the world of Melanie Gideon. THE SLIPPERY YEAR chronicles a year in which Gideon confronts both the fantasies of her receding youth and the realities of midlife with a husband and a child and a dog (one of whom runs away). Marriage changes passion, Gideon confides; suddenly you're in bed with a relative (in Gideon's case, a relative with a penchant for buying residential vehicles online.) She reflects on the exigencies of family life - the need for a household catastrophe plan and the fainting spell occasioned by the departure of her nine year old son for camp.