The Slap

I’ve been reading ‘The Slap’ by Christos Tsiolkas, a novel I heard about a few years ago and have been hoping to get a hold of.

The story revolves around a group of friends present at a party where one ‘dad’ actually hits the 3 year old from another family and we are then drawn into the story and get to observe the incident from the point of view of all those in the social set.

As a story it’s interesting and generally well written. It has some good insights, but for my money it’s weighed down by an overload of gratuitous sex scenes and ‘f’ and ‘c’ words. I don’t think I’m any prude, so when my ‘take it easy’ radar goes up then I figure it’s overdone and somewhat unnecessary.

The friend who lent it to me described it as a ‘very base’ novel and I reckon he was on the money. I am just over half way thru and the legal implications of ‘the slap’ have been resolved, so it will be interesting to see what the next 280 pages have in store.

As a story that addresses a range of interesting social issues it has some currency, but you really do need to be able to get past some pretty explicit sexual stuff – certainly more than I needed to encounter anyway!