Lucas Schaefer\u2019s debut has that essential quality of all great novels: It\u2019s easy to imagine how someone could hate it … Here\u2019s a novel so pumped up and shredded it can\u2019t possibly sit still on a shelf. Long before its official release on June 3, The Slip was already bouncing down the ramp with both fists punching the air. I spent most of the week not just reading this story but cheering it on in a state of unhinged excitement … So much is packed in that The Slip feels more like a three-ring circus than a 12-round match. If you like your fiction neat and ruminative, stay away from this sweaty, outrageous book … In Schaefer\u2019s narration, these shenanigans are wildly, transgressively hilarious, reminiscent of the brash sexual comedy of Philip Roth\u2019s early novels. But The Slip is also exploring larger themes about the confounding nature of race in America and the human urge to slide into another identity … The breadth of his affection feels as wide as the depth of his comedy. In an era when racial and sexual identities have become fluid matters of who belongs and who doesn\u2019t, who lives and who dies, The Slip stamps right into our most pressing debates. I won\u2019t tell you how Nathaniel and X\u2019s storylines eventually collide, but it\u2019s a plot that dares to be just as bizarre and unbelievable as real life\u2014or what the narrator calls ‘the vast peculiarities of this world’ …. Honestly, I haven\u2019t felt quite like this about a book since I was dazzled by Jonathan Franzen\u2019s The Corrections almost 25 years ago. But despite his equally capacious reach, Schaefer is no Franzen wannabe. If anything, he\u2019s looser, confident enough to be sweet, and despite his richly comic voice, this satiric tongue never develops fangs.<\/p>\n