Have you ever read an author that could describe you and everyone you know better than you could? Who could make observations cut so deep you question whether you are paying attention to your own life? This is how I felt after finishing The Slip by Lucas Shaefer, my most recent fiction read after The Golem and The Jinni.
It was superb and also difficult to describe.
As the NYT says:
Lucas Schaefer’s “The Slip” is a maximalist debut that brings to mind Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth” and Nathan Hill’s “The Nix” in its stylistic brio, vivid sociological detail and general air of chutzpah. Trying to summarize it in an 800-word review is like trying to paint a mural on a postage stamp. Suffice it to say, you’re unlikely to read a more impressive first novel this year.
Typically how I select books is by coming across recommendations and/or the occasional best-of list. That was how I found The Slip. I didn’t know anything about the book going in, just that it was supposed to be good. That it was broadly dealing with the themes of race and sex was very much secondary to the fact that it was just a beast of a story told so well.
I didn’t want it to end.
