William 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 sim­ple plaint: ​“I want you to build us a house.” Caught off-guard by the request, William is sud­den­ly forced to reck­on with his own hopes and desires, his grow­ing dis­com­fort at home and work, and, in the end, the fight-or-flight ulti­ma­tum his wife has posed for their future. Com­pli­cat­ing these ques­tions are the ghosts of oth­er rela­tion­ships in William’s past, ancient and recent-from the ex-girl­friend whose child is a kind of sur­ro­gate son to William, to his new neigh­bor, his part­ner in a recent indis­cre­tion now uncom­fort­ably returned to the fore­ground. Marked by the author’s trade­mark blend of yearn­ing and mor­dant wit, The Slip­page is Ben Green­man’s most sus­tained and emo­tion­al­ly pow­er­ful work of fic­tion to date.