The Slippage - by Ben Greenman (Paperback)

About the Book

The Slippage is a wry, wistful tale of marriage, lust, and disconnection from Ben Greenman, the critically acclaimed author of What He s Poised to Do.

William Day must confront some uncomfortable truths about his life and his future when his wife Louisa asks him to build her house. The take-it-or-leave-it demand becomes all the more difficult to swallow when he finds himself grappling with a past recklessness, an ex-girlfirend s son he considers his own, and his own wants for what lies ahead.

Sure to appeal to everyone who has ever been in love and had their heart broken, The Slippage shares uncanny truths about intimacy and modern relationships."

Book Synopsis

The Slippage is a wry, wistful tale of marriage, lust, and disconnection from Ben Greenman, the critically acclaimed author of What He's Poised to Do.

William Day must confront some uncomfortable truths about his life and his future when his wife Louisa asks him to build her house. The take-it-or-leave-it demand becomes all the more difficult to swallow when he finds himself grappling with a past recklessness, an ex-girlfirend's son he considers his own, and his own wants for what lies ahead.

Sure to appeal to everyone who has ever been in love and had their heart broken, The Slippage shares uncanny truths about intimacy and modern relationships.

From the Back Cover

William and Louisa Day are a suburban husband and wife, with no children, confronting the question of what their relationship means to them and if and how it will survive. One day, after weeks of bizarre behavior--disappearing in the middle of parties, hoarding mail--Louisa approaches William with a stark request: "I want you to build us a house." Caught off guard, William is suddenly forced to reckon with his own hopes and desires, his growing discomfort at home and work, and, in the end, his wife's fight-or-flight ultimatum. The result is an emotionally powerful novel, marked by Ben Greenman's trademark blend of yearning and mordant wit.

Review Quotes

"Ben Greenman's What He's Poised to Do is a terrific collection--a set of elegant, inventive dispatches that knock around space and time, and the wrenching gaps between people, to chart a world of previously unnamed moments and emotions." - Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins
"Greenman offers quiet, serious stories lifted by occasional humor and linked by instances of written correspondence. " - New York Times Book Review
"Greenman's writing is wonderfully intimidating, bountiful yet compressed." - Los Angeles Times
"A wonderful, insightful, gleefully confident novel." - Chicago Tribune
"Ben Greenman, prolific writer of experimental fiction, has written his own version of the Great American Novel." - The Rumpus
"The Slippage showcases [Greenman's] talent for funny and incisive dialogue, and for creating a cast of intriguing characters. . . A provocative page-turner." - Time Out New York
"...wry... In fluid and commanding prose, Greenman depicts this disconnected couple caught in the undertow of their unfulfilled early 40s. ... the success of The Slippage lies in [a] hazy, in-between state of being, where Greenman can reflect on loneliness through his characters, adrift in their own personal grids of sadness." - New York Times Book Review
"...wry... In fluid and commanding prose, Greenman depicts this disconnected couple caught in the undertow of their unfulfilled early 40s. ... the success of The Slippage lies in [a] hazy, in-between state of being. . ." - New York Times Book Review
"Perceptive." - Publishers Weekly
"Greenman's latest shout-inducing (angst-ridden and damned funny) novel, The Slippage, [is] a wry, wistful tale of marriage, lust, and disconnection." - PopMatters.com
"His most traditional and plaintive novel . . . Mr. Greenman rarely plays a wrong chord." - New York Times
"Mr. Greenman conjures the world of his characters in transporting detail . . . [His] keen descriptions, coupled with Mr. Greenman's wry wit and inventive turns of phrase[, ] are antidotes to the bleak narrative and make this novel difficult to put down." - New York Observer
"Soccer moms and backyard barbecuers beware: Sleepy suburbia is about to get a wake-up call in The Slippage, a new novel from Ben Greenman. . . . His sharp insights into suburban claustrophobia and impotent rage are highlighted by striking images and well-tooled prose." - Kansas City Star
"Ben Greenman fascinatingly explores marriage malaise and suburban sadness. . . . Greenman brilliantly teases out the ache and tenacity underneath the everyday grind of the Days and the couples they know. . . . Greenman's suburbs are lush with longing, and he captures solitude with an expert's strokes." - Interview
"The Slippage is a terrific novel, a wry and affecting depiction of an America adrift in its tidy cul de sacs of anxiety, lust, and disappointment. Ben Greenman writes crackling dialogue, brilliant characters, and sentences so sharp they hurt." - Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins and We Live in Water
"Greenman's style will appeal to those who appreciate literary fiction that succinctly yet eloquently dissects the contemporary American marriage." - Booklist
"Sleepy suburbia is about to get a wake-up call in The Slippage, a new novel from Ben Greenman . . . a humane portrait of a couple desperately seeking energy and authenticity in the face of white-washed suburban civility. . . . Greenman has a knack for chronicling the uncertain angst of suburban life, of patterns and routines that form around us while we're busy just getting through the day. . . . sharp insights into suburban claustrophobia and impotent rage are highlighted by striking images and well-tooled prose. . . . [and] Greenman has crafted one of the more surprising and remarkable opening scenes in this year's bumper crop of contemporary realism." - Kansas City Star
"Greenman has a knack for chronicling the uncertain angst of suburban life. . . [He] has crafted one of the more surprising and remarkable opening scenes in this year's bumper crop of contemporary realism." - Kansas City Star
"Ben Greenman's relentlessly funny novel engages with the mystery whereby a seemingly sane man can take steps to simultaneously solidify and destroy his life. Greenman is a brilliant and wry stenographer of the brain's 'plausible explanations for impossible acts.' Arsonist and architect both (like his characters), he writes about structures-houses, marriages, cruddy office jobs, graphs and charts, our hearts-and what they cannot hold." - Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia
"With The Slippage, Ben Greenman proves what many of us suspected: he's one of our best writers, and he can do anything. This is a work of sneaky-weird realism that shows us-with typically Greenmanesque humor and smarts, and a new, cool, ruthless eye-what America is like right now. It'll be the book of the year." - Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life and Chang & Eng
"With The Slippage, Ben Greenman proves what many of us suspected: he's one of our best writers, and he can do anything...It'll be the book of the year." - Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life and Chang & Eng
"Ben Greenman's relentlessly funny novel engages with the mystery whereby a seemingly sane man can take steps to simultaneously solidify and destroy his life. Greenman is a brilliant and wry stenographer." - Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia
"Reminiscent of the greatest, elegiac work of William Maxwell, Greenman's book is a reminder of the ways we fail, in love, and find grace in even that failure. This is truly a beautiful book." - Pauls Toutonghi, author of Evel Knievel Days and Red Weather
"Ben Greenman's The Slippage turns backyard barbecues and suburban playgrounds into tense and charged territory. . . . If Emma Bovary had lived in the 'burbs, she would have left a story like this in her wake." - Emma Straub, author of Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures
"This book is like a strobe light--in short, sharp bursts, Ben Greenman renders the world we know into something startling, hypnotizing, and downright trippy." - Daniel Handler
"Though moments of this suburban novel bring to mind Yates or Updike, Ben Greenman is an original. In limpid, often mordant prose, he conjures a dreamscape of American disappointment with monogamous sex, bourgeois values, and make-work jobs. Yet his characters are hopeful and their yearning universal. In The Slippage he has done the impossible--written a romantic novel about mid-life marriage." - Amy Sohn, author of Motherland and Prospect Park West
"The last image of The Slippage is indelible: Two people, standing in darkness, watching each other through a window. To say more would be to say too much. Still, it's a perfect metaphor for love, and for the thing that Ben Greenman does so well. As you watch these characters, you watch yourself, too--reflected back, in silhouette. Reminiscent of the greatest, elegiac work of William Maxwell, Greenman's book is a reminder of the ways we fail, in love, and find grace in even that failure. This is truly a beautiful book." - Pauls Toutonghi, author of Evel Knievel Days and Red Weather
"In The Slippage, Ben Greenman illuminates the strange, electric moments that lurk in the seemingly ordinary milieus of the suburban kitchen, the married bedroom. With compassion and dark humor, Greenman brings the absurdity and grace of marriage vividly to life." - Laura van den Berg, author of What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us
"Ben Greenman's The Slippage is a slyly funny and heartbreaking portrait of suburban American marriage, like an update of John Cheever in an age of smartphones and rampant corporate greed. This stellar novel asks whether it's ever possible to see clearly-in love, life, or art." - Luis Jaramillo, author of The Doctor's Wife