The Slip

"This debut novel from Lucas Schaefer is a sprawling epic with a memorable cast of characters, including a 16-year-old boxing student in Austin, Texas, who disappears and another teenager who seeks answers to questions about his body via a phone-sex line. The book tackles themes of sex and identity beautifully, and Schaefer writes with a self-assurance that’s stylish but not showy. Fans of authors like John Irving, Paul Murray and Nathan Hill will find a whole lot to love in this knockout of a novel."

"Lucas Schaefer’s The Slip also seems to have appeared on all the major literary highlights lists this summer. Lithub described it as a “00-page tragicomic Texan epic that tackles race, class, gender, sexuality, police violence, mental illness, immigration, boxing, and clowning” and compared it to Nathan Hill’s The Nix , another big beast of an American novel that came out a few years ago to great acclaim. (To give you a sense of how highly buzzed this book has been, in a starred review , Kirkus noted that comparisons to Jonathan Franzen, Philip Roth, and John Irving were “earned and deserved.”) Schaefer reflected, rather appealingly, on the decade he spent writing this novel during an interview : “To give you a sense of how long it took me to write The Slip , at a back-to-school meeting at the tutoring center where I worked, I was once gifted a watch for my service as a career tutor . Tutoring is great because it really keeps you humble. I busted into the study room like Kramer on Seinfeld : “I just sold a novel to Simon & Schuster!” I might as well have said, “I just got back from the dentist.” The student was happy enough for me, but he had a test coming up. So, we studied for that.” Out now."