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The Slippage (2013)

by Ben Greenman(Favorite Author)

2.9 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0061990515 (ISBN13: 9780061990519)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Harper Perennial

review 1: Think Tom Perrotta but with little of the humor. Or Meg Wolitzer or Julia Glass but more suburban and with a lot less depth, detail, and empathy. The premise is interesting -- suburban marital ennui, and a falling apart of otherwise stable lives that begins with "the slippage" of the title -- but the book is gimmicky enough that you don't ever really feel that you know these characters. It's more like they represent people who might be experiencing all of these things, but as a reader you never gain access to the inner lives that allows you to understand how they feel about them. I believe that these sorts of things really do happen to people, but Greenman didn't make these particular people seem all that real. That makes it difficult to care about these character sta... morend-ins, and if you don't care about them, you don't much care what happens to them. If the events described were more outlandish that might make up for the way he deals with the characters, but precisely because he is describing a scenario that we are meant to see as potentially anyone's story, it just ends up being a little bit boring.
review 2: The story centers on William Day, who seems like your typical suburban professional. He lives with his wife, Louisa, and pretty much makes it through life one day at a time. But he must deal with a loss of control in his life once his wife shows him the plot of land where she wants to build a home. One by one, things start happening that threaten to unravel his life. This is a very well done novel about a dysfunctional marriage. less

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