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The Slide (2009)

by Kyle Beachy(Favorite Author)

3.55 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0385341857 (ISBN13: 9780385341851)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

The Dial Press

review 1: (disclaimer i know the author from telepresence and have had the pleasure of sharing a non-telepresence beverage with him, so salt my stars to your taste)I was either never young enough or old enough, even when I was young enough, to appreciate coming-of-age stories. I always resented the genre because i cynically suspected its implementations to be either wisdom from someone unfairly young to have it or just unripened bile. and by "I was" i mean mostly I am. So I was a little uncertain, even with the data of knowing the author to be a talented and savvy assembler of words, about reading what is putatively a coming-of-age novel about being 22 and home from college back at the home of your soon-to-divorced parents. So I was delighted and professionally entertained by this b... moreook that is actually a gnomic sweltering revision of Hamlet, the story of a mad prince who cannot manage the responsibilities of being attached to a full-sized penis, in the words of page 270 something. A few of the elements of the book trail off into something like incompletion but such reflections of life as The Slide captures are an incomplete thing. The best you can hope for is to change in parallel, the author tells us. Anyway I am officially reading into the device that I read this book, and that I endorse it for the use of anyone with a gimlet eye or ear for the contradictions and collisions of post-childhod human life circa 2000 AD USA suburbia. unquestionably the best novel written in part about the 2001 st. louis cardinals.
review 2: Based on responses from some whose opinions I respect very much, I really wanted to love this book. Unfortunately, it just didn't float my boat all that much. It was a fine book with some very fine writing in it. At his lyrical best, Beachy is a very solid writer. But on the whole, I just felt sort of meh about the story and lacked the sense of place that seems to make the book appeal to many reviewers.I do find myself wondering if this isn't a book that appeals to a younger audience than I (oh dear) find myself these days to belong to. Maybe I'm getting too old and crotchety to very much enjoy a coming-of-age story.All that said, I'd read another of Beachy's, as I do see potential there. This one just wasn't my particular style. less

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