Customer Reviews

The Slide: A Novel

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Amazon owes this book more credit than to convice curious readers that it should be bought in tandem with Eat, Play, F***. In addition to the rendering of a very familiar post-college brand of disappointment, I don't think you could find a better distillation of St Louis in a Fodor's guide.

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.

I'm 22 years old and about to graduate college. This book initially caught my eye because of the similarities in age of the main character and myself. However, although Potter is much different than I am, I found that his character was extremely well developed, and that the both of us are thoroughly amused by sarcasm. I was seriously laughing out loud at certain parts of this book, and if you also have a dark sense of humor, you will too. You can bet yourself I'll be pre-ordering anything else that has been touched by the pen of Kyle Beachy.

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.

Read Kyle Beachy's debut novel, The Slide, on sunny days. Reflect too long on the many slides and reversals experienced by all the characters in this book and you're likely to join in their depression and loneliness. Protagonist Potter Mays has graduated college and moves back home uncertain of what's next. His parents seem to welcome him, but their marriage has been in a downward slide, perhaps ever since Potter's brother died years earlier as a child. Potter's girlfriend went from college to Europe on a weird quest with a bisexual friend. After some malaise that Beachy presents with fine descriptive language and wit, Potter gets a job delivering bottled water. Potter has insomnia, his dead brother appears to him as a ghost, he develops relationships with a sixteen year old neighbor and a lonely younger boy whom he met while delivering water. The rocket slide in the park he visited as a child becomes the image for the direction of Potter's life. Thanks to manipulation by a rich friend, Potter gets in more trouble. He's a loveable sap, and epitomizes many of the anxieties lived out by people in their early-twenties. Beachy's humor and decent writing make this debut worth a try to those readers willing to look at work from a new and young writer.

Rating: Three-star (Recommended)

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.

Beachy's debut novel is the thing of dreams. It is at once lovely and dark, hilarious and very sad. beachy shows great potential and I eagerly await his next generous offering to the world of fiction.

The Slide is a really strong debut novel. I cared about Potter Mays and his sad parents. I found myself carving out odd chunks of time to get back to the book once I'd put it down. Kyle Beachy's a writer to watch.

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.