Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put on My Pajamas, and Found Happiness
Dominique Browning
Atlas & Co.
271 pp.
ISBN-13:
Summary
In November 2007, former editor in chief of House & Garden magazine Dominique Browning experienced what thousands have since experienced. She lost her job.
Overnight, her driven, purpose-filled days vanished. With her children leaving home and a long relationship ending, the structure of her days disappeared. She fell into a panic of loss but found humor despite everything, discovering a deeper joy than any she had ever known. It was a life she had not sought, but one that offered pleasures and surprises she didn’t know she lacked.
Slow Love is about wearing your pajamas to the farmers’ market, packing up a beloved home and moving to a more rural setting, making time to play the piano and go kayaking, reinventing yourself, and not cutting corners when it comes to love, muffins, or gardening. This elegant, graceful—and yet funny—book inspires us to dance in the kitchen and seize new directions. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Dominique Browning was the last editor-in-chief of the shelter magazine House & Garden (from 1995 to 2007) published by Conde Nast. Currently, she contributes to various newspapers and magazines and writes a monthly column for the Environmental Defense Fund website.
As an author, Browning has written books related to her work: Around the House and In the Garden: a Memoir of Heartbreak, Healing, and Home Improvement and Paths of Desire: the Passion of a Suburban Gardener. Her third book, Slow Love: How I Lost my Job, Put on My Pajamas, and Found Happiness was published in 2010.
Apart from these three books, Browning also wrote books under the House & Garden brand: The House & Garden Book of Style, The Well-Lived Life, Gardens of Paradise and House of Worship. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Losing a job without just reason can cause the victim to become very angry. And wrath provides the one ingredient that had previously been absent from Browning’s writing. Fueled by rage, she has become not only an elegant and meditative writer but a pungently witty one, spinning out one-liners with throwaway ease. (“I began to knit him a scarf,” she discloses of a certain recalcitrant man. “Yes, I wanted to strangle him.”)....The most sensitive parts of Slow Love describe the triumph of spirit over circumstance.
Miranda Seymour - New York Times Book Review
Browning's 13-year-job as editor-in-chief of House & Garden fulfillingly defined her days and her identity; when the magazine folded two years ago, she was shaken to the core of her being. Having maintained her Westchester house, family of two grown sons, extensive garden, and frequent dining out, her life and general sense of self was radically shaken over the next year, and in this enchanting, funny, deeply gracious memoir, Browning, many years divorced, recounts how she found enlightenment at the other end. Writing was one way to absorb the panic; she went on a muffin-baking binge and gained 15 pounds; lost track of days, remaining comfortingly in her pjs and yearning perilously to reconnect to a former lover she calls Stroller, who was deemed wrong for her by everyone she knew. A few small decisions had enormous impact, such as when insomnia compelled her to tackle Bach's Goldberg Variations on the piano, and poignantly she refocused on her artistic nature. There is such feeling and care on each page of Browning's well-honed memoir—her rediscovery of nature, her avowal to let love find her rather than seek it, tapping satisfying work at her own keyboard—that the reader is swept along in a pleasant mood of transcendence.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
1. How does Dominique ultimately define slow love? What does “slow love” mean to you, and how can you maintain it throughout all walks of life, regardless of employment?
2. Have you or a loved one lost a job? How did you get or give support? How did you adapt your lifestyle as a consequence? How does the structure of the work day shape the way you live your life?
3. While at Condé Nast, Dominique often spent more time with her “office family” than her own. How do you reconcile your work life and your home life? Does one role overwhelm the other? How do you shift between the two?
4. After House & Garden folded, Dominique discovers that some friends are much less friendly once she loses her powerful status. How have you dealt with fair-weather friends? How can we cultivate enduring friendships?
5. Dominique calls her house a Museum of Happiest Memories: so much of her family life revolves around the house. How does a family change when the house that unifies it is no longer present? What makes a house a home, and how can you carry your“happiest memories” with you when it’s gone?
6. Dominique often turns to food for comfort, especially eggs, cookies, and the deluge of muffins. What are your comfort foods, and why is food so comforting for us? How does your relationship with food change based on your daily routine?
7. Dr. Pat recommended a strict diet for Dominique, complete with a daily meal schedule. How does the structure of this diet reflect the structure of a work day? How can we balance our need for structure with the idea of slow love?
8. Dominique makes multiple attempts to integrate herself into Stroller’s life, from bringing her clothes into his closet to planting mint in his yard. How do you share a life with someone? When those efforts are thwarted, what keeps you in a relationship past its expiration date?
9. One of Dominique’s preferred ways to slow down is by gardening and communing with nature. Where do you find natural beauty? How do you bring that outdoor serenity into your home?
10. Dominique calls the period of mid-life her “intertidal years.” How are transitional states featured throughout the book? What distinguishes this time of life from that which precedes it?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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