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 unrecognizable 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, the fainting spell occasioned by the departure of her nine year old son for camp. With wit, tenderness, and unsparing honesty, Gideon captures that moment in our lives when the magic starts to ebb, and when the things you have loved forever begin to fall away for the first time. It is the story of a woman's quest, in the face of all the big questions (What's this loose skin around my knees? I don't look as old as she does, do I?) to reignite passion, beauty and mystery, and discover if 'happily ever after' is a possibility after all.