Baby Got Books

Slam

Nick Hornby has a new book out for “Young Adults” (YA). It’s ok for actual adults to read books from that section of the bookstore, too. Honest. In this month’s “Stuff I’ve Been Reading Column” in The Believer Hornby says:

…dismissing YA books because you’re not a young adult is a little bit like refusing to watch thrillers on the grounds that you’re not a policeman or a dangerous criminal…

True, he has an alterior motive for this viewpoint, but the idea is relatively sound. Anyway… I was handed an advance reading copy by a mysterious benefactor (thanks MB!), so I had to take it out for a spin.

Nick Hornby Slam Cover

Hornby’s best characters have been damaged adult males with arrested development (see High Fidelity, About a Boy, and the non-fiction Fever Pitch). His most rubbish characters have arisen when he attempts to write from a female perspective (see How to be Good). I skipped A Long Way Down, because I feared the worst. His latest, Slam, is a return to adolescent male form that Hornby does so well. Literally.

Slam is told from the point of view of a teenage boy – a 15 year old kid into skateboarding, video games, and hanging out. Sam’s mother and father are divorced. Whenever he needs manly advice, he turns to the poster of skateboarder Tony Hawk on his wall. Sam has read Hawk’s autobiography (Hawk – Occupation: Skateboarder) so many times that whenever he has an important life question to ask a relevant fragment from the book can usually serve as a reasonable response – a “What Would Tony Do” exercise.

Things are going pretty well for Sam, relatively speaking, until he meets a girl and the wheels seemingly come off of his young life. Shortly after launching into a relationship with his first girlfriend, Sam learns that he will become a teenage father. He reacts how you might expect – he takes off for a coastal town where he vacationed once and throws his cellphone into the ocean, ready to begin a new life on the run. With Tony Hawk’s sage counsel and a few flashes into the future to see how things turn out, Sam gets it sorted out — eventually. And that last part is not nearly as cheesy as I made it sound.

Hornby does a beautiful job of capturing the inner workings of the teenage male mind – such as it is – with remarkable precision. It’s uncanny. This is definitely one of Hornby’s better books. If you’re a Hornby fan, you can read this one without hesitiation. And if you’ve got a teenager around, you may want to pick up a copy to scare ‘em celibate without being preachy.

Additional Reading:

Tags: Nick Hornby, Slam, Tony Hawk

Books, Fiction, Review | Tim | October 16, 2007 7:00 am

5 Comments

By flavawheel, October 16, 2007 @ 6:52 pm

Hmm, sounds kind of cool, might check it out. And I can die knowing that I will never be able to come with a worse book title than “Hawk – Occupation: Skateboarder,” except for perhaps “Hawk: Occupation: Skateboarder,” so I have that going for me.
By Tim, October 16, 2007 @ 10:07 pm

I believe that the double colon title is actually correct: I just couldn’t type it.

Good news, Flava, I’m paying this one forward. Keep an eye on your mailbox.
By flavawheel, October 17, 2007 @ 7:57 pm

Really? Oh, how cool is this? Thanks. Also, desperately attempting to get with the now by reading What Is The What. So far, so good. Also read Deer Hunting With Jesus. Yep.
By Arukiyomi, October 18, 2007 @ 5:49 am

Read High Fidelity over the summer. My first Hornby. I enjoyed bits of it but it did leave a funny taste in my mouth somewhere between a Krispy Kreme and a Hugh Grant film!

Not sure I’ll be reading this despite your tempting review…

http://johnandsheena.co.uk/books/?p=73