A Boxing Novel!

. . . and a return from aunty fun!

I recently wrapped up almost four weeks of looking after my awesome teen nephews, and whew! I had a lot of fun. But HOW do mothers do it, year in, year out? It makes me think of the international students I once taught who would ask me why is there no support for families in this country? Why would anyone have children here? right before admitting they were having a hard time without their own domestic help.

I did manage to finish The Slip, a maximalist and very funny debut novel by Lucas Schaefer. The Washington Post calls it a “sweaty masterpiece!” It’s set in my hometown of Austin, largely at a fictionalized version of Richard Lord’s Boxing Gym. It’s about a teen boy, Nathaniel, who boxes at the gym for a summer before vanishing in August 1998.

The novel alternates between the run-up to Nathaniel’s disappearance, and the continued speculation and search for him ten years later. It’s about the identities we are born into and whether or not we are allowed to change them. It’s wild and rangy, very original, and full of shifting POVs. There are no minor characters—everyone gets a full backstory, a deep longing, a reason for their broken heart.

I especially appreciated a character named Ed Hooley, an indigent man who lives in the back room of the gym. The gymgoers and owner are proud of the part they play in keeping Ed from living on the streets. I understand this. As many of y’all know, when the resident handyman in my mom’s Central Austin neighborhood got kicked out of his apartment for getting crossways with his landlord in the aughts, he moved into my mom and stepdad’s tiny, un-air-conditioned backyard storage room and stayed there—very happily—for sixteen years. So I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the Ed Hooley’s of this town and what our collective, and my personal, responsibility is toward them.

One of the driving questions of The Slip is: what is this town if there is no longer a place for the Ed Hooley’s, the people living on the fringes, who will never again be able to make ends meet here, but who have something essential to contribute to the upkeep and culture of this particular place?

Be warned: the humor in this novel is outlandish, outrageous, wonderful, often sexual, freakish and bizarre, not for the faint of heart. In short, I loved it!

I’ll be back next week with more varied installment of this newsletter! Until then, go forth and read The Slip!