The Slide

The Slide was well worth the read. Kyle Beachy starts out with what seems like just a humorous story about figuring life out post-college, but then twists things just so slightly at the end for a powerful, emotional conclusion--without being overdone or maudlin. The first-person narrator has a great voice that is frequently making self-deprecating and "wink-wink" comments to the reader, which keep the story light as the plot moves along. Definitely worth checking out.

The Slide is a terrific debut novel. A middle American coming-of-age story with a dark sense of humor, not unlike The Graduate for the 21st century. Beachy is an incredible sentence-level writer and this is a fast-paced page-turner of a read.

What a great read! Kyle Beachy has achieved something so amazing with this novel. I love his prose style--it's entirely unique, very bold, and wonderfully cynical. The Slide is a story of failed and failing relationships--between husband and wife, father and son, between friends, between lovers. Beachy's protagonist, Potter Mays, is a recent college grad caught in a moment of upheaval. Preoccupied by his dissolving love for his globe-trotting girlfriend, haunted by a dead brother he never really knew, uncertain of how to move on after college, Potter drifts purposelessly through the Missouri summertime making every mistake possible. His character is at once relatable, despicable, pathetic, and honest. Potter's struggle is a familiar one, but twisted and exaggerated to the point of tragicomedy. The Slide is impossible to put down--I loved it!

Kyle Beachy's prose was so refreshing and I felt like Potter Mays was a perhaps slightly exaggerated version of a recent college grad. Approaching that hurdle of adulthood myself, I was so instantly drawn to Potter and invested in him that I couldn't stop reading. After finishing I felt a comforting sense of awareness about the world and future we're fast approaching.

Kyle Beachy creates a world that is maybe a half a dimension over from ordinary reality - in his St. Louis the people are smarter, the girls are prettier, and the drugs have better names - but Potter Mays is just as confused as anyone I knew when they left college with a degree in liberal arts degree. Not only is Potter confused about ambition and love, but he has to deal with both the ghost of his younger brother and a (alive) boy, Ian, whose scenes with Potter are a joy to read. Potter has a family missing a son, and Ian is a son missing a family, and the two strike up a strange and lovely friendship. This relationship - between a young man and a young boy - might be awkward in other hands, but in The Slide's heightened reality Ian is the perfect conscience Potter wishes he had. The book is funny, it's biting and satirical and pointed, yet it never loses its heart. Kyle Beachy manages to be earnest and honest and deeply sad when writing about home and family and finally, really growing up.