The Slippage

March 18, 2013
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. Agent: Jim Rutman, Sterling Lord Literistic.

February 15, 2013
Greenman's book examines the marriage and relationship of two imperfect, ordinary people. William and Louisa Day are a childless couple living in suburbia; he works in a midlevel office job and she in a museum. She asks him to build them a house to ensure that their lives together are moving forward, which he does. Isn't that part of the American dream? But he is dissatisfied with their life together, perhaps out of boredom or a vague feeling that he is trapped and unfulfilled. He is losing his footing, the condition he defines as slippage. A one-night stand with a married woman turns into an affair that adds a dimension to the story without apparently adding to William's happiness. It's a tale of middle-class angst with few events, although fire eventually consumes some of the readers' attention. Before that, a case of workplace violence makes one wonder if the story really takes place in the United States. In what company could a man punch his boss in the nose and not be permanently escorted out of the building on the same day? So, it's a not-bad story built on characters and interactions, with the events being incidental. Unfortunately, there is no omigod, what happens next. Will the marriage hold, the slippage stop? How about the affair? Where Greenman shines, however, is in his use of language, with William "foresuffering" in the novel's opening sentence. Later on, he looks up at the sky and sees a "gluttony of blue," and that's perfect. Another character "talked like a car whose brakes had been cut." Vivid imagery and metaphors bring life and a spark to what would otherwise be an ordinary literary exercise. A perfectly decent read, but it probably won't keep you up at night flipping pages.

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April 1, 2013
On a quiet suburban street, all is not as it seems in the Day household. William and Louisa appear to be an ordinary married couple, except Louisa is checking out of the marriage in odd ways, and William seems willfully unaware of any problems. While Louisa retreats from social gatherings and displays no noise and barely any life as she disappears beneath the bed covers, William continues on autopilot in his corporate job and daily activities. Then Louisa drops a quiet bomb. William is to build her a house on land she secretly bought. The unspoken ultimatum to her desire is simultaneously vague and sinister. In her need to know for sure that life is moving forward, the threat of Louisa's outgrowing both him and the marriage galvanizes William in unexpected ways. Their marital cracks become even more brutally exposed, especially after a woman from William's past moves into the house across the street. Greenman's style will appeal to those who appreciate literary fiction that succinctly yet eloquently dissects the contemporary American marriage.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)