Slam

I really really enjoyed this. I was surprised by the more negative reviews I read, especially the Tony Hawk frustration. While I agree that this is one of those books that may be too fixated on people in a certain time-Hornby loves pop culture-so that's nothing new. I also thought Tony Hawk was a vehicle that worked well and was amusing at times. I really could care less what figure Hornby chose, it would've been just as good. The...unexpected quality of the book was not as jarring as some reviews would have you believe and all in all I thought the teenage boy perspective on teen pregnancy and life was a very good and bittersweet read...I'm really leaning to 4.5.

So I know that most literature is always about men, for men, and from the perspective of a man, because the ability to write, to read, and to have perspective in general has been denied women for most of written history. But why is it that 99.999% of books are written with crap characters who never act as their real counterparts might? How is it that it happens so rarely that an author is able to capture the psyche of the male, if that is all they have been working on for generations?

And how is Nick Hornby so good at it? I smiled with recognition nearly throughout the book. Sure there were tons of bullshit cliches. And sure it was corny that this kid listened to Green Day and talked to Tony Hawk for advice. But how is it that Nick show more Hornby is able to capture the thought patterns of teenage boys (and, as someone who is well out of his teen years, men in general), and the details are the only shit parts? It's usually the other way around.

We watch Sam mosey through life like a real kid, acting like a real kid, and DEFINITELY communicating like a real person. Nick Hornby has some insight into the male brain, its true. We watch Sam think carefully about his words, carefully working out which are the best responses, and then, when he actually says them, he's blindsided with the response that he never saw coming, and as a reader, we also never saw. Its really a pleasure to live inside a real character, and to feel real emotions. Frankly, its rare, and its why I stay away from fiction in general.

I really enjoyed this one. I laughed a lot, and I even cried a little when the character cried right after the baby was born. show less

Nick Hornby's Slam is about Sam, the teenage son of a single mother who had him too young. Sam, unfortunately, in the course of book, is about to follow in his mother's footsteps. Sam's a pretty normal teenager, into skating (that's skateboarding for the uninitiated), preparing for the possibility of studying art at college, and, of course, spending all kinds of time with his superhot girlfriend, Alicia. Everything is going along quite nicely, that is, until Alicia gets pregnant.

Slam's kind of a weird book. Sam himself is, for the most part, a very normal teenage guy. When faced with the staggering revelation of his girlfriend's pregnancy, he doesn't really know how to be supportive and kind of irrationally just wants to run away from show more the whole thing. In short, he's inarticulate, obsessed with Tony Hawk, and he's kind of irritating - just like you would expect him to be at his age. Then there's this weird plot thing where he consults with a poster of Tony Hawk for tidbits of life advice, which are tangentially related quips from Tony's book reproduced by Sam's overactive imagination, and the part with the supposed time travel (dreaming?) that reveals to Sam the various courses his life might follow as a too-young dad.

By turns bizarre and painfully realistic, Slam makes for some interesting reading. Hornby seems to be spot on when he digs into the issues of teenage parenting, how unprepared kids are for the responsibility, how the parents eschew helping for debating over which kid ruined the other's life, as well as how quickly kids can age when they are forced to take on big responsibilities. I liked these parts. I liked that even though Sam's very colloquial narration reveals a character that, from a female perspective, is, on the whole, kind of aggravating, Hornby doesn't shy away from a creating a character who has very real and believable reactions to a very real and drastic turn of events in his life.

I could very well have done without all the weird Tony Hawk stuff, but even that, kind of points to Sam's immaturity that obviously doesn't go away just because he's about to become a father. On the whole, being inside the head of a character I often couldn't decide whether I'd like to give a hug or a shove made it a little difficult to love this book, but Slam is definitely an interesting and rare look inside the male perspective on teenage pregnancy. show less

Nick Hornby is a master of ordinary human drama. His latest, Slam, is sometimes described as Young Adult fiction, but I think fans of his adult fiction wil enjoy this one, too.

Sam, the protagonist of the book, is a fairly typical London 16-year-old. He likes skating (not ice-skating, mind you), he’s doing well enough in school, and he mostly gets along with his mom, especially now that she’s broken up with her rubbish boyfriend. And then he meets Alicia. And everything changes.

I loved Hornby’s writing style. Sam is not the kind a narrator who you’d expect to write beautifully, and so Hornby chose to have him “tell” the story instead. I also liked that Hornby doesn’t seem to be pressing an agenda regarding teen pregnancy. show more Hornby neither celebrates nor condemns his characters; he’s just telling a story. I respect him for that.

See my complete review at my blog. show less

Sam is nearly 16 and everything in life is going really well for him. His mom has dumped the boyfriend Sam didn't like; he's learned new, more difficult skating tricks (that's skateboarding, not ice skating--he's a huge Tony Hawk afficiando, even talking to his Hawk poster and having it talk back to him and show him his future); his teachers think he might have college potential; and he's started dating Alicia, a girl he'd thought was way out of his league. As Sam himself says in the novel, when everything's ticking along this well, it's time to go and screw it up. And this generally normal, average kid does that in spectacular, life-changing fashion. He gets his girlfriend pregnant, echoing his mother's worst nightmare for him (she had show more him while still a teenager as well). This is the story of Sam, how he screwed up, came to grips with his screw-up, and makes a new, unexpected and imperfect but liveable life for himself.

I'm sure there are a load of novels dealing with teenaged pregnancy but Hornby has managed to add a fantastic new one to the mix. With Sam narrating, rather than girlfriend Alicia, the reader gets a much different perspective than usual. How a soon-to-be teenaged father reacts is different than a soon-to-be teenaged mother. We are taken along in Sam's world as he battles the desire to flee without finding out if Alicia is indeed pregnant (well, he does flee but he comes back), as he tries to finish enough schooling to become something, and as he struggles through life with a new baby and a girlfriend he's not sure he wants to be with any longer. As in his novels for adults, Hornby is quite adept in drawing an adolescent boy and all the confronts him in life. Sam is realistic and sympathetic. The other characters make fewer appearances on the page than Sam does and in fact the other characters are fairly few in number. But the focus on Sam works and while this isn't the usual cautionary teen pregnancy tale, there is certainly no glorification, rather a humorous but still difficult realism. I generally tend to like Hornby's non-fiction better than his fiction but I can recommend this one as a well-written and satisfying read for young adult or even adult. show less

Just before he turned 16, Sam's life was going pretty well. His mother - who was only 16 years old herself when she had Sam - just dumped her terrible boyfriend, his teachers began encouraging him to seriously consider studying graphic design in college, and his skateboarding skills were slowly but surely improving after years of practice at the local skatepark in his working-class London neighborhood. He even met a really cute girl named Alicia at a party his mum dragged him to, and they began seeing a lot of each other, in every sense of the phrase. But while their romance quickly fizzled out, an accidental pregnancy ensured that they would be forced to continue seeing a lot of each other, whether they liked it or not.

Nick Hornby's show more first book written for a young adult audience, Slam is entertaining and heartfelt. As anyone who is familiar with any of Hornby's other works would expect, it will certainly appeal to boys and does a good job of dealing with questions of what it means to be a man and a father in a language that teens will relate to. Especially affecting is his portrait of Sam's relationship with his mother, whose own experiences with an unexpected teen pregnancy help Sam to understand that while the arrival of a baby portends enormous changes, it need not ruin his life nor Alicia's. The book also honestly addresses questions of social class in its portrayal of the conflicts that arise between Alicia's upper-middle class parents and Sam's working-class mother.
The author does an excellent job of giving Sam his voice, that of an average, self-involved kid, someone who remains in a certain degree of denial about his situation even as it progresses, someone who takes to his board and a local patch of concrete whenever he needs to sort out his overwhelming circumstances. The book has a great deal of charm as well, and while the Tony-Hawk-as-medium may sound bizarre or gimmicky, it actually gives a refreshing non-linearity to the story, a way of presenting Sam's rushed and uncertain path to adulthood in a novel way. Overall, this was a quick but worthwhile read. show less

Slam, Hornby’s first foray into young adult fiction, is narrated by Sam, a teenage boy that must learn to be a man. Sam’s hero is skateboarder Tony Hawk and, as Sam’s life takes a downward turn, he turns to “TH” for advice. The poster in Sam’s bedroom typically throws words from Hawk’s autobiography back at him, but then he begins showing Sam his future. Sam doesn’t particular like what he sees as it confirms his worst fears -- his ex-girlfriend is pregnant and he’s about to be a father.

Hornby handles the problems and pressures surrounding teenage pregnancy as well as Sam’s coming of age expertly. He’s pretty good at creating the voice of a teenage boy, which, if you’ve read his short story, "Otherwise show more Pandemonium," you will recognize. I have a feeling the short story was a test run. Anyway, the voice was completely believable to me.

It was interesting to see Hornby play with his earlier pattern. In High Fidelity and About a Boy, the main characters are men who still act like boys, but who finally learn to be men during the course of the novel. Sam doesn’t have the opportunity to grow into a man child because he has a child of his own. He learns the lessons of Hornby’s earlier characters much sooner and much more quickly than Rob or Will.

I’m not normally a YA reader, but had to read Slam because of my love of Hornby’s work. I was not disappointed. If you haven’t picked up a Hornby book yet, consider Slam as an option. And really, if you haven’t picked up a Hornby book yet after nearly a year of me praising him, you should be ashamed of yourself. :)

http://iubookgirl.blogspot.com/2011/10/review-slam.html show less