Slam

Author: Nick Hornby
Publisher: Putnam/Penguin Young Readers Group


October 2007, 304 pages, Young Adult Fiction

I know what some of you would say. You’d say, Sam’s too nice! This old bloke was rude to him and he still agreed to get him down the steps! But I know what the rest of you would say too. The rest of you would say, If he was halfway decent, he wouldn’t even be in Hastings! He’d be back in London, looking after his pregnant girlfriend! Or ex-girlfriend! So the rude old guy was sort of God’s punishment! And to tell you the truth, I’d agree with this last lot. I didn’t want to be messing around with pensioners. But it was still better than dealing with everything back home. I suddenly thought of the mobile at the bottom of the sea, bleeping away with its messages, and the fish all freaking out.

-- From Slam, by Nick Hornby

English author Nick Hornby has dutifully produced ‘vox populi’ fiction about contemporary men struggling to grow up, cope, and accept responsibility for the better part of fifteen years. Often these males are self-absorbed, id-driven, and change themselves for others. Readers respond with great enthusiasm; men read them as how-to manuals. His latest offering, Slam, follows the same formula – but it’s written in the sprawling vocabulary and context of a teenager.

Hornby’s writing style has always been conversational and loose, his characters lovable despite occasional actions, and his pages are often filled with pop-culture hooks (soccer fanatics in Fever Pitch, audiophiles in High Fidelity, a bachelor pad full of great stuff in About a Boy). So it really isn’t so great an ollie for Hornby to pen a young adult novel about a skateboarding teen forced to grow up painfully fast. Slam tells the story of Tony Hawk-obsessed Sam, an 18-year-old art student who speaks directly to you as the reader, like you are his confidant or therapist, relating two years of his life since a life-altering event in highly reasoned hindsight.

Sam lives with his single (and dating) 32-year-old mother in middle-class London, England. When 16-year-old Sam is forcefully introduced to the beautiful Alicia, they rush into a physical relationship. Things are rocky and they are about to break up when she gets pregnant, just like Sam’s mom did at their age. The man-boy seeks advice from the bedroom poster of skating legend Hawk, whose memoir Sam has read “50,000 times”. The imagined Hawk can only speak in Magic 8-Ball like passages relating to the issue, but it’s the only solace the troubled young father-to-be can find.

Hornby’s real accomplishment with this story is not necessarily wading through a heady subject matter or his deft incorporation of pop-culture. Many have written on the subject of being a teen parent, and many book houses produce young adult literature that make affinitive references to fashionable celebrities or items to endear the product to a targeted reader. His ramble-style and use of language make his work significant. Many teen pregnancy stories in film, TV, and books can get heavy-handed and serious, too much like the time your parents sat you down and reasoned with you to avoid youthful mistakes. The YA label is a difficult genre to navigate – it’s can’t be patronizing or proselytizing – so having an author with a pop vernacular and conversational wit helps.

Typically, Hornby’s characters come from deeper, adult backgrounds with more emotional fractures. In Slam, the narrative voice is younger and can only observe and deal with life matters from less than two decades of experience. Hornby adapts well enough.

Sam has the same wishes and desires of other teenage boys. He wants to hang at the local skate park. He wants to date normal girls. He goes to the movies and to the Starbucks for a frappucino. His friends aren’t the ideal, but they are what they are.

It becomes a troubling part of the writing process however when Sam acts with the hesitant wisdom of a righteous older person. He doesn’t try drugs, he is hesitant about fooling around, and in general is wise beyond his years. The pregnancy is portrayed as something forced upon him. The material is much more enjoyable when Hornby just lets it flow rather than preventing the characters from learning by experienced humanity.

Two of the three Hornby novels turned into movies were re-settled in America for better understanding of the material by audiences there. So what hope do teens in America have to interpret life there? It’s the subtleties of detail and thought underneath the action that often make this author’s writings pop, so much so that Slam may be a more popular novel with his established adult fan base than new and younger readers. VS

Nick Hornby will appear as part of Harry W. Schwartz’s Live series at Alverno’s Pitman Theater Saturday, Oct. 20 at 7 p.m. The $25 ticket will include a copy of Slam. Order tickets at: http://alvernopresents.alverno.edu/Schwartz-Live.aspx or call 414-382-6044 for more information. For a podcast of the author reading a passage from his new book, please visit amazon.com and enter keywords Slamand Nick Hornby.