A tough but fair review of The Slip ...

... appeared in The Winnipeg Review last week, which I found during a fit of self-Googling during my lunch hour today. As outlined in the piece, reviewer Keith Cadieux struggled with the fact that protagonist Philip Sharpe spends the vast majority of the novel in ignorance over the true nature of his "slip" on live TV - a perfectly valid opinion to hold about a premise that, by its own admission, stretches the boundaries of plausibility. (Cadieux also took exception to the narrative's admission to this implausibility.) He found the opening scene, i.e. the initial argument between Philip and his wife Grace, "fairly generic," and he also found the novel's ending to be "a series of neat resolutions."

But he also had lots of nice things to say, too. He loved the flashback to Philip's childhood growing up in a downmarket pub in Charlottetown; he appreciated the flashback to Philip and Grace's honeymoon, where he rejects her suggestion that they have a foursome with another couple they meet; and he got a hoot out of scene where Philip loses yet another Remembrance Day poppy while getting chewed out by the dean about his "slip."

Anyway, these sort of mixed reviews just come with the territory of putting a book out into the public sphere, and as always I'm grateful that work of mine gets any attention at all. Props to Cadieux for taking the time and the space to reviewing The Slip, and to The Winnipeg Review for running it.