Slam

NH could write a sprawling, epic novel; he has the facilities to do so. Instead, he writes simpler, more relatable stories. I use the word 'relatable', because almost everyone can identify with the struggles of these characters. 'Slam' could be his MOST relatable story. It's about parents... and children... and children parents. The book is narrated by a 15 yr old skateboarder who initially seems oblivious to the world, but proves anything but. The story can't be sold in the plot description; no first-time author could have gotten this book published with a 10 minute meeting. I'll bet NH would agree. His reputation brought this book to print and it could be his best work. FUNNY is the first word I use when describing NH books (I've read them all). 'British humor' isn't the proper description. He has spent much of his life in the US and understands our comedy as well as any American writer. The laughs are consistent, but he isn't a joke-teller. NH provides an inner-dialogue, where failed attempts at comedy are as funny as the spoken word. 'Slam' delves into a very serious subject: teen pregnancy. A comic turn on that subject may discourage some readers from embarking, but NH keeps it classy. This is a story which SHOULD be read by teens and WILL be enjoyed by grandparents. There is very little romantic love in this yarn; it remains on the periphery. NH has too much respect for sex to trivialize it. I'll end with a bit of classic Hornby. Some context may be lost, but this is a teen's perspective on parenting: "It was hard, but it was hard in the way that holding your breath for 5 minutes is hard, not in the way that maths exams are hard. In other words, any idiot can at least have a go at it." Simple... brilliant... Hornby

I was trying to think of how to review this book and I thought of two ways. One is the simple, plot based review: Some dude gets his girlfriend pregnant and he learns life is like skating, one slip-up and your whole life can change for the worse. The problem with Hornby is that Hornby doesn't write for the plot. Sure, he usually has clever plot hooks, a single guy goes to single parent support group meetings to hit on women with a higher chance of being loose anywhere except a brothel but ends up unexpectedly bonding with a woman's kid, but the plot isn't what makes Hornby worth reading. Hornby is worth reading due to his execution - his ability to craft everymen male leads and tell their tales with a lot of wit. In Slam, the wit is missing but the male character is much stronger, much more relatable. I honestly feel like Sam, the male lead, is a character every guy can look at and say, "Yeah, that's pretty much the stuff I think and feel." I feel like this is a book women should read so they can get an inside look at how men actually think and feel and why we do or say the stuff we do. This is the first book Hornby has written where I felt like the characters were living, breathing people. I think Slam has his best developed female characters. Looking back on his earlier work, that isn't saying much, but this time he really nailed the women. The other thing about this book is Hornby is finally getting a grasp on how to end his books. With About a Boy and High Fidelity, it was clear he had no idea how to end so he had everything work out phenomenally well like a bad sitcom. In A Long Way Down, Hornby was finally moving away from the sitcom ending to the open-ended ending, but he still was grasping for a resolution. With Slam, Hornby has finally let a book end with confidence. The Q&A at the end was a cute way of saying, "I'm out of stuff to say. For further adventures of the future of Roof, write your own!" Overall, an excellent book I'll be recommending to every woman I know!

Hungry for a Nick Hornby fix, I imagined that Slam might indeed work for adult readers as young adult literature often does: either by reminding us of our adolescence, never as far away as we might wish; or by providing a particular interesting example of a genre. Slam does, and is, neither. Its virtues first: (1) Nick Hornby wrote it, (2) something is occasionally funny (notably Sam's xenophobic father), and (3) it manages to be a cautionary tale without distracting didacticism. Here are some of its weaknesses: It really makes no effort to think about any option to pregnancy other than having the baby. Sam's girlfriend simply wants to have the baby, end of story. Precisely why that is so we never know. Moreover, she not only wants the baby, she more than once declares that she's never wanted anything more. Why is that? Granted, life is sometimes like this. But surely it's troubling that in this book, it's the male who rebels, who minds the limitations on his freedom, who worries about his future. And yes, I know that Sam, a male, is the narrator. But that fact doesn't really change the question all that much. Equally disburbing: why does Sam's mother get pregnant? What on earth is the point of that? We aren't even encouraged to think that baby Emily's father is necessarily a serious relationship. I can't find either motive within the novel, or sense in the world outside of the novel, for this choice. Pregnancy politics aside, Slam is just not very interesting. Sam talks entirely too much and is frequently coy. The book is particularly painful when Sam is at his most immature. I skipped a dizzying amount, something I never do with Hornby's books. In the end, I felt I had spent a great deal of time with someone I never really came to like. Why can't we know something else about Sam? What kind of art does he do? Could we know the name of a single course he's taking or project he's working on? I understand that the pregnancy, for Sam, consumes him and causes him to chatter about it non-stop, to himself and to us. But the degree of self-absorption, the relentless indifference to almost anything else, is hard to read or to want to read. Some reviews have said that Sam gives voice to adolescent males in difficult circumstances. Fair enough. Maybe he does. The point is, I wouldn't know and neither, I dare say, would many of the reviewers. If indeed Slam captures a particular emotional lexicon, then good for it. But for me, it did not manage to create, even for a long moment, a language for the rest of us.

If you love Nick Hornby books, you’ll love this too.

Un très bon roman "parlé", très agréable à lire, au style moderne. Une histoire idéale à offrir à un ado pour lui éviter les erreurs et les "chais pas".

An average book to read. But the quality of the book publishing and the delivery was very good.

Mit Nick Hornby kann man nichts falsch machen, und "Slam" bestätigt dies! Die Geschichte eines werdenden Teenage Vaters hätte mich vom Thema her nicht sonderlich angesprochen, aber Hornbys Erzählstil mit einem 18-jährigen Ich-Erzähler hat mich nicht mehr losgelassen. Gelungen die Flucht des jungen Sam nach Hastings, der damit hofft, dass dadurch Alicias Schwangerschaft keine Konsequenzen für ihn hat, und herrlich der Kunstgriff, Sam in seine eigene Zukunft zu versetzen - mit Hilfe von Sams Idol, dem Skater Tony Hawk. Dass Sam selbst eine erst 32-jährige Mutter hat, gibt der Geschichte noch weitere Dimensionen und zeigt, was eine Teenage-Mutterschaft für langfristige Konsequenzen (und Möglichkeiten) hat. Fazit: "Slam" ist clevere und vielschichtige Unterhaltung! 5 Sterne. PS: Nicholas Hoult gibt einen absolut anbetungswürdigen Sam ab in der englischen Fassung des Hörbuchs!

お母さんが16歳のときに生まれた16歳のSamの同い年のガールフレンドが妊娠してしまった。 これが日本だったら、ともかく、世間体の為に中絶という手段をとるか、 子供の戸籍のために周囲が説き伏せて結婚させて翌年離婚か？私って、悲観的でしょうか？ でも、Hornbyの小説ではそうはならない。 Samとガールフレンドの気持ちはとっくに冷めていて、Samに父親になる気持ちは出来てない。 どうなんでしょうか？ 物語はあまりにもなめらかに進んでゆきます。ほとんどあれよあれよというままに。。。 どこにもつっかかりがありません。 最初に出てきたTony Hawk もいつのまにかいなくなります。 少年のお母さんがガールフレンドのお母さんと親子ほど年が違ってることからおこるエピソードは面白いけど、 物語の核心ではない。 強いていうなら、イギリスでは、お父さんが年頃になった息子にコンドームと一緒にこの本を渡して性教育のとっかかりにするかもしれません。でも、日本ではちょっと想像しにくいです。 とにかく、読んでください。そして、感想を聞かせてください。