THE SLIP

A missing teenager is at the center of a densely populated plot that bobs, weaves, and levitates around a boxing gym in Austin, Texas, from 1998 to 2014.

Perhaps not since Nathan Hill’s The Nix (2016) have we seen a debut as hugely ambitious as this one, pulling out all the stops to tell a unique version of the American story. Though there are more characters, more subplots, and just plain more than can be outlined here, the novel revolves around a miserable 16-year-old nudnik named Nathaniel Rothstein of Newton, Massachusetts, who’s sent to live with his Uncle Bob in Austin for the summer of 1998. Bob gets him a volunteer job at a rehab center with a friend of his from Terry Tucker’s Boxing Gym, a charismatic Haitian immigrant named David Dalice. David becomes a mentor to the boy, intent on furthering his worldly education with lectures on matters such as “Have you ever licked the sweetness?” Nathaniel channels this inspiration into an obsession with “Sasha,” the voice on the other end of a 1-900 phone sex hotline of which he becomes a daily devotee. But one day in August, Nathaniel goes out and doesn’t come back. In the course of finding out what happened to him, we will meet many, many people: a rookie female cop; a Playboy-model-turned-beautician and her unhappily gendered teenage son (who has just changed from Charles Rex to “X”); various denizens of the boxing gym, including an unhoused man who’s allowed to bunk there and his twin, literally an evil clown; and a depressed woman in the rehab who is rediscovering her Italian American identity. Identity: There’s a good place to stop, as it is the unifying theme of the entire 500-pound gorilla. Schaefer, who’s white, is bold in his approach to issues of Blackness and whiteness, and has invented a truly wild plot in service of exploring them. He is equally fearless in writing about gender and sex. And the solution to the mystery is a trip and a half.

Swings for the fences, makes it at least to third. Franzen/Roth/Irving comparisons earned and deserved.