August 20, 2024

SLOW DANCE, by Rainbow Rowell

My friend @meli_mello1 was a Rainbow Rowell fan, and when I was reading Slow Dance this weekend I kept thinking about how unfair it was that she’d never be able to read it, all those things a person is robbed of when she dies at 45 (not least of all, the chance to see her three daughters grow into the people she was raising them to be). The unfairness of this inspiring me to once again sign up for the Turning the Page on Cancer Readathon, for which I’m hoping to raise $1000 for Rethink, supporting young women diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. I hope you will consider supporting my efforts!

And wow, SLOW DANCE, just a beautiful, impossible, agonizing-at-times love story about two messed up weirdos who everybody always assumed were together in high school, but they were just friends. “Just friends” who were everything to each other, and so terrified of communicating that truth and daring to take things any further for fear of messing it all up and wrecking everything that they mess it all up and wreck everything. They both have different dreams of how they’re going to make it out of their North Omaha neighbourhood, Shiloh through Broadway stardom, and Cary through a career with the Navy, and how to weave those dreams together seems absolutely unworkable, and then they don’t even speak for 14 years until a reunion at their friend Mikey’s wedding, Shiloh divorced and a mother of two, Cary still dealing with his dysfunctional family, Shiloh living back at home with her mom. It’s like nothing has changed, but also everything has changed, and will it be possible for these two to find a way forward (particularly as they’re both determined to fling obstacles in their way so they won’t ever have to stumble upon such a thing unaware).

I loved this book. I loved these characters. A time machine, without the metaphysics. How did we get from there to here, and where are we going after?