The Slippage is a wry, wistful tale of marriage, lust, and disconnection from Ben Greenman, the critically acclaimed author of What He’s Poised to Do.William Day must confront some uncomfortable truths about his life and his future when his wife Louisa asks him to build her house. The take-it-or-leave-it demand becomes all the more difficult to swallow when he finds himself grappling with a past recklessness, an ex-girlfirend’s son he considers his own, and his own wants for what lies ahead.Sure to appeal to everyone who has ever been in love and had their heart broken, The Slippage shares uncanny truths about intimacy and modern relationships.Review“In The Slippage, Ben Greenman illuminates the strange, electric moments that lurk in the seemingly ordinary milieus of the suburban kitchen, the married bedroom. With compassion and dark humor, Greenman brings the absurdity and grace of marriage vividly to life.” (Laura van den Berg, author of *What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us* )“Ben Greenman’s The Slippage is a slyly funny and heartbreaking portrait of suburban American marriage, like an update of John Cheever in an age of smartphones and rampant corporate greed. This stellar novel asks whether it’s ever possible to see clearly-in love, life, or art.” (Luis Jaramillo, author of *The Doctor's Wife* )“With The Slippage, Ben Greenman proves what many of us suspected: he’s one of our best writers, and he can do anything...It’ll be the book of the year.” (Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life and *Chang & Eng* )“Ben Greenman’s relentlessly funny novel engages with the mystery whereby a seemingly sane man can take steps to simultaneously solidify and destroy his life. Greenman is a brilliant and wry stenographer.” (Karen Russell, author of *Swamplandia* )“Reminiscent of the greatest, elegiac work of William Maxwell, Greenman’s book is a reminder of the ways we fail, in love, and find grace in even that failure. This is truly a beautiful book.” (Pauls Toutonghi, author of Evel Knievel Days and *Red Weather* )“Ben Greenman’s The Slippage turns backyard barbecues and suburban playgrounds into tense and charged territory. . . . If Emma Bovary had lived in the ‘burbs, she would have left a story like this in her wake.” (Emma Straub, author of *Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures* )“The Slippage is a terrific novel, a wry and affecting depiction of an America adrift in its tidy cul de sacs of anxiety, lust, and disappointment. Ben Greenman writes crackling dialogue, brilliant characters, and sentences so sharp they hurt.” (Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins and *We Live in Water* )“Greenman’s style will appeal to those who appreciate literary fiction that succinctly yet eloquently dissects the contemporary American marriage.” (Booklist )“Greenman has a knack for chronicling the uncertain angst of suburban life. . . [He] has crafted one of the more surprising and remarkable opening scenes in this year’s bumper crop of contemporary realism.” (Kansas City Star )“Perceptive.” (Publishers Weekly )“Greenman’s latest shout-inducing (angst-ridden and damned funny) novel, The Slippage, [is] a wry, wistful tale of marriage, lust, and disconnection.” (PopMatters.com ) From the Back CoverWilliam and Louisa Day are a suburban husband and wife, with no children, confronting the question of what their relationship means to them and if and how it will survive. One day, after weeks of bizarre behavior—disappearing in the middle of parties, hoarding mail—Louisa approaches William with a stark request: "I want you to build us a house." Caught off guard, William is suddenly forced to reckon with his own hopes and desires, his growing discomfort at home and work, and, in the end, his wife's fight-or-flight ultimatum. The result is an emotionally powerful novel, marked by Ben Greenman's trademark blend of yearning and mordant wit.

Q: What do Tiger, Paris, Lindsay, Alec, and Oprah have in common with the enduring characters of Anton Chekhov?A: Love, loss, pride, yearning, heartbreak, renewal, transcendence: the very stuff of life.The immortal stories of Anton Chekhov have long entranced readers with their insights into the universal truths of human behavior . . . but you've never read them quite like this. Former friends Nicole and Paris exchange prickly pleasantries in "Tall and Short."Talk-show host Dave narrowly averts another potential domestic crisis in "A Transgression."Reality star Kim shares her newfound notoriety with Khloe and Kourtney in "Joy."In a witty, graceful, and revelatory feat of literary reinvention, acclaimed novelist and humorist Ben Greenman takes nineteen of Chekhov's greatest stories and recasts them with some of the best-known luminaries of our time--with eye-opening, and oddly...

Ben Greenman is a writer of virtuosic range and uncanny emotional insight. As Darin Strauss has noted, "Like Bruno Schulz, George Saunders, Donald Barthelme, and no one else I can think of, Greenman has the power to be whimsical without resorting to whimsy." The stories in this new collection, What He's Poised to Do , showcase his wide range, yet are united by a shared sense of yearning, a concern with connections missed and lost, and a poignant attention to how we try to preserve and maintain those connections through the written word. From a portrait of an unfaithful man contemplating his own free will to the saga of a young Cuban man's quixotic devotion to a woman he may never have met; and from a nineteenth-century weapons inventor's letter to his young daughter to an aging man's wistful memory of a summer love affair in a law office—each of these stories demonstrates Greenman's maturity as a chronicler of romantic angst both contemporary and timeless, and as an explorer of the ways our yearning for connection informs our selves and our souls.