13Oct
Ever since I read A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby, I`ve been a big fan. I had only previously read High Fidelity (which I must acknowledge I just read after having seen the movie) but have since read all of his novels. After catching up and reading all his novels, I was then in need of new material.
Hornby`s soon-to-be-released new novel, Slam, did not fall soon enough.
Some months ago, I received an advance copy of Slam. With its U.S. release only days away now, I wish to go my thoughts on the script for Hornby fans who have anxiously been waiting for his latest novel, and for readers everywhere (and of all ages) who have yet to see Nick Hornby`s fiction.
Slam is intended for young adults, but adult Hornby fans can rest assured that Slam will yet be as pleasurable to them as Hornby`s prior novels.
The new is about Sam, a teenage skater (as in skateboarding) who seeks advice on life from Tony Hawk`s autobiography and negotiation to a bill of Hawk on his wall. Early in the story Sam meets Alicia, the two begin dating and soon thereafter have sex and think a child. The story, written from Sam`s point of view, is about Sam`s dealing with the fact he is shortly to become a teenage father.
I wasn`t sure at first what I thinking about Hornby writing for young adults from the position of a teenager. His initial success came from books with male protoganists, but also has written a novel with a female narrator in How To Be Good, as easily as hold with 4 different narrators, two male and two female, in A Long Way Down, quite successfully. As a fan of Nick Hornby, I think it will be comfortable for other Hornby fans to receive his first effort at the teenage fiction genre. His fans will value his unique way and dialogue, which compensates for the clearly teenaged target audience the new was written for.
Hornby fans know very good of the profundity of his characters` introspections in novels. Whether the matter is music, divorce, suicide, etc. Hornby gives an extraordinary and authentic voice for his characters. But, how does Hornby handle writing the sound of a 15-year-old kid struggle to get to terms with the fact he is loss to be a father?
Hornby`s unique style works rather easily with the story of his principal character, Sam. As How To Be Good proved his manner was not gender specific, Slam proves that his manner is likewise not age specific.
One of my favorite moments of Sam`s introspections comes when he contemplates running out from the job of his now ex-girlfriend Alicia, by going for Hastings:
I knew I was being a coward, but sometimes you get to be a coward, don`t you? There`s no show in being brave if you`re only passing to be destroyed. Say you walked around the box and there are fifty al-Qaida there. Not yet fifty. Five. Not yet five. One, with care a machine gun, would be enough. You might not feeling secure about working for your life, but what are your choices? Well, I had walked round the corner, and there was an al-Qaida with machine gun, except he was merely a baby, and he didn`t receive a machine gun. But in my world a baby, even without a machine gun, is similar a terrorist with a machine gun, if you mean about it_ (p. 109)
Hornby convincingly writes from the position of a teenager overwhelmed with the weight of consequences of his actions and tackles the result of teen pregnancy with bluntness and honesty.
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