Tina Brown’s webiverse conglomerator (or god, surely there’s a term? someone tell me what we’re calling these, please) The Daily Beast has a feature today on “Four Overlooked Books of 2009“, which includes the following and other nice words for The Slide:

Beachy has a distinct and very funny voice, and the book’s mood of confused longing sticks with you...It’s affecting and a little bit strange—and when I was done I vowed to read whatever Beachy writes next.

Anyone looking for a juicy-as-hell story about why the Times hasn’t yet reviewed The Slide please contact me and I will be happy to make one up.

As in-depth a write-up as I’ve received, today. From the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, a couple thousand words that are just thorough in every possible way, not to mention very positive. From the final paragraph:

And that’s why today The Slide becomes only the fourth book in CCLaP’s history (and the first this year) to earn a perfect score of 10, and why in my opinion it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see this get a dark-horse Pulitzer nomination come next year. It’s one of those books that makes you feel all funny and sad and strange afterwards, one of those books that inspires cults among 23-year-olds…What a treat this book was, a truly unexpected treat, and what an astounding future Beachy has in store for himself as an artist. I recommend jumping on the bandwagon yourself as soon as possible.

Well hey thanks, Chicago Reader and people who read the Reader, voters, and personal friends. The Slide has been deemed this year’s Readers’ Choice for “Best Book By A Chicago Author In The Past Year“. The Reader’s Choice (very important apostrophe placement) is Aleksander Hemon’s The Lazarus Project.

This weekend’s Books & Media section of the Chicago Tribune reviews The Slide alongside new books by Jesse Ball and Patrick Somerville, two men I know and admire. The ender paragraph is a doozy…

Beachy writes with quiet force about innocence and corruption, about how even something as transparent as water can be a source of deception. In sizzling dialogue, madcap action and striking soliloquies, Beachy grapples with the toxicity of ambivalence and the complexities of inheritance, grief and the failure to communicate as his brooding young hero begins to discern what it means to be a man.