Review: Slow Love by Dominique Browning

Hardcover: 250pgs
    Published: May 9, 2010
    Publisher: Plume

In November 2007, former editor in chief of House & Gardenmagazine 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.

I am so disappointed in this book because it is just so close to being great; it's so close to pulling at your heartstrings and making you relate to the author, but it just never quite gets there.

The novel focuses on the true life-story of Dominique Browning, the former editor of House & Garden Magazine, and how she deals with suddenly being unemployed, and how she learns to slow down her way of thinking, her loves and her life. She learns to appreciate love, cherish it, and in some ways, it is refreshing to see an author preaching the usefulness of slowing life down in our speed-racing world. But at the same time, this concept has been done before, and I don't feel that Browning differentiated herself from the rest.

I also found it highly distracting that though Browning is unemployed, she has enough money to continue her lifestyle. Yes, she does resort to going on lots of blind dates just to eat some good food, but when the economy is so awful that most unemployed are losing their homes, families and sense of self-worth, it's hard to see how anyone can actually relate to Browning's situation.

Maybe it's just bad timing to release the book right now.

2 out of 5 stars