You Had Me at "Put On My Pajamas"-- a book review

Dominique Browning’s Slow Love is the recession’s version of Eat, Pray, Love. Eat, Eat, Love, I suppose. Browning was the editor of House & Garden, which suddenly ceases production. She is unemployed, underloved, and faced with an overabundance of homemade muffins. Browning wallows for awhile, making it through each hour, each day, until finally compelled to get moving, slow down, and start loving life for its own sake.

In some moments, her story is very relatable. Girl loses job, girl wallows in pjs, girl makes bad relationship decisions, girl moves to beach house... okay, not always relatable. While these days people can sympathize with job loss, less people understand downsizing to just the beach house. But Ms. Browning is forgiven; her prose is witty, beautiful, full of emotion. I laughed out loud reading her descriptions of walking through Manhattan in her pajamas... to buy more pajamas. She is self-deprecating to a fault. While I appreciate that she never plays the victim describing her on-again-off-again relationship with so-named Stroller (he out Bigs Mr. Big), but her self-deprecating attitude carried over too far into the relationship at the cost of her worth and happiness. Stroller will definitely inspire a strong reaction as you read.



Slow Love is certainly a worthy read. Can’t say that it’s inspired me to live a slower life (it’s pretty slow around here already), but Browning tackles universal issues with wit and style. And she already convinced me to bake cookies this week. That’s a Love I relate to.

Want to chime in? Join the BlogHer Book Club Discussion of Slow Love.