For anyone who has ever wondered Is this all there is, Melanie Gideon's poignant, hilarious, exuberant meditation on the indignities and consolations of modern domestic life will be an inspiration to live more fully, laugh more deeply, love more passionately, and appreciate the inescapable absurdities of every day.

A few weeks before her forty-fourth birthday, Melanie Gideon has an epiphany: sooner, rather than later, she is going to die. She realizes that if she doesn't wake herself up soon she is going to sleepwalk through the rest of her life. Devastating and sweet, moving and powerfully affirmative, The Slippery Year is a conversation about all the things that matter: children, summer dresses, sisters, dogs, love, loss, the passage of time - and all the reasons to go on living when the only thing we can be certain of is that one day it will all end. The Slippery Year is the story of a woman who consciously chooses to find beauty, significance, and meaning, not by chucking it all but by embracing the life she already has.