Matt Margolis

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 admit I only 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 come soon enough.

Some months ago, I received an advanced copy of Slam. With its U.S. release only days away now, I want to offer my thoughts on the book for Hornby fans who have anxiously been waiting for his latest novel, and for readers everywhere (and of all ages) who have yet to experience Nick Hornby’s fiction.

Slam is intended for young adults, but adult Hornby fans can rest assured that Slam will still be as enjoyable to them as Hornby’s prior novels.

The novel is about Sam, a teenage skater (as in skateboarding) who seeks advice on life from Tony Hawk’s autobiography and talks to a poster of Hawk on his wall. Early in the story Sam meets Alicia, the two begin dating and shortly thereafter have sex and conceive a child. The story, written from Sam’s point of view, is about Sam’s dealing with the fact he is soon to become a teenage father.

I wasn’t sure at first what I thought about Hornby writing for young adults from the perspective 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 well as book with four different narrators, two male and two female, in A Long Way Down, quite successfully. As a fan of Nick Hornby, I believe it will be easy for other Hornby fans to welcome his first attempt at the teenage fiction genre. His fans will appreciate his unique style and dialogue, which compensates for the clearly teenaged target audience the novel was written for.

Hornby fans know very well of the depth of his characters’ introspections in novels. Whether the subject is music, divorce, suicide, etc., Hornby gives an extraordinary and authentic voice for his characters. But, how does Hornby handle writing the voice of a 15-year-old kid struggle to come to terms with the fact he is going to be a father?

Hornby’s unique style works quite well with the narration of his main character, Sam. As How To Be Good proved his style was not gender specific, Slam proves that his style is also not age specific.

One of my favorite moments of Sam’s introspections comes when he contemplates running away from the problem of his now ex-girlfriend Alicia, by leaving for Hastings:

I knew I was being a coward, but sometimes you have to be a coward, don’t you? There’s no point in being brave if you’re just going to be destroyed. Say you walked round the corner and there are fifty al-Qaida there. Not even fifty. Five. Not even five. One, with like a machine gun, would be enough. You might not feel good about running for your life, but what are your choices? Well, I had walked around the corner, and there was an al-Qaida with machine gun, except he was just a baby, and he didn’t have a machine gun. But in my world a baby, even without a machine gun, is like a terrorist with a machine gun, if you think about it… (p. 109)

Hornby convincingly writes from the perspective of a teenager overwhelmed with the burden of consequences of his actions and tackles the issue of teenage pregnancy with bluntness and honesty.