The Slippage
A Novel
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Greenman's perceptive yet predictable novel about suburban living and its discontents, William and Louisa Day are a childless couple in their early 40s at a crossroads in their marriage. After exhibiting some erratic behavior, Louisa surprises William by announcing that she's purchased an acre of land and wants him to build a house on it. William's relationship with Louisa is complicated by the other women in his life: single mother Karla, a former lover with a 10-year-old son, Christopher, to whom William acts as a kind of surrogate father; and Emma, a married woman he casually slept with a year ago at a conference, who rather too conveniently for the story writes to say that she will soon be living right across the street from him. Emma is pregnant, but makes it clear that she's still sexually interested in William. With pressure at his job and fears that a pyromaniac is on the loose, William and Louisa nevertheless begin work on their new house. But will this be enough to save their foundering marriage? Although not quite as emotionally unsparing as Revolutionary Road, it's interesting to note that in the almost 52 years since Richard Yates's novel was published, the state of affairs in suburbia, at least according to author Greenman (Superbad), remains status extremely quo.
