When he is back to his normal time, he concludes he was sent intothe future by some occult ability of his Tony Hawk poster. Things seem to be going well for Sam until 'slam!' Sam begins to datethe beautiful Alicia and believes he's in bed with her. He concentrateson their relationship at the expense of all his other interests, likeskateboarding. They have sex several times, once without protection.After a while, Sam gets bored with the mass of his relationshipwith Alicia and decides to break-up. But, later on, Alicia calls him andasks to play with him. Yep, she`s pregnant. They get some decisions tomake-have the minor or not, stay together as a rival or not. Sincethere is foreshadowing throughout, the decision to the teen pregnancyissue is predictable-although the very end of the history is asurprise because it is another prophetic dream.My Review: This is the first Nick Hornby book I`ve readalthough I`ve seen two of his movies, About a Boy and High Fidelity andthoroughly liked them both. So, I was actually look forward to readingSlam. Unfortunately, for me, most of this story falls flat. Don`t get mewrong. There are some entertaining parts. It has some humorous bits,especially at the beginning. And I did enjoy reading the dialogue whenSam and Alicia meet. Oh yes, and the upbeat ending is a plus. But, theauthor fails to prevent my interest, I think, because the mainstoryline is too predictable. The `time travel` or "future predictiondream" idea is interesting but without sufficient explanation. And thestory movement, from side to adjacent to past, is sometimes confusing. Samnarrates the story as if his fast paced, non-stop thoughts are talkingto me. And if someone did speak to me like that, I would either say"Stop, slow down, you`re driving me crazy!" or maybe listen for 10-15minutes and so say, "Sorry, gotta go!" For example, the narrationgoes, "It was sunny, and I`d spent most of the day down at Grind City ,which as you may or may not know is a skate park a short bus ride frommy house. I mean, you probably wouldn`t know that it`s a short bus ridefrom my house, because you don`t know where I live, but you might haveheard of the skate park, if you`re cool, or if you know somebody who`scool." If his thoughts were just like that a few times, itwouldn`t be bad, but he does that a lot_starts off in one direction andfalls back to explain. I think the author thought it would go like anauthentic 15 year old, but after awhile, I thought it was annoying. Finally,if I say, along with the tedious narration, there is nothing endearingabout Sam or Alicia, you would not be surprised to see that I can`trecommend Slam (.well, maybe, you would like Slam if you're a 15-16year old skater who loves Tony Hawk, and you take some insight intodating a beautiful girl that you have aught in common with and hopeto, or, actually, hope not to, get pregnant, and if you did get herpregnant, whether you were obligated to stay with her and the baby ornot.YOU SEE HOW ANNOYING tedious narration can be!).Cover: 5/5Plot: 2/5Characters: 2/5Writing: 2/5Ending: 2/5Overall Rating: 2/5 (mildly entertaining when not annoying)
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