Review: The Slap

I have so many things I want to review at the moment, so I'm just going to jump right in. First off, The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas.

Imagine you're at a suburban barbecue and someone's terrible child proceeds to ruin everyone's (probably already precarious) good time by throwing fits whenever an adult or older child refuses to give in to his every whim. Now, imagine someone actually gives the kid what he deserves - like a swift slap across the face. Is that going too far?

This question, posed in The Slap, is answered in pretty much every way imaginable by the novel's characters. All are present at barbecue, and all are affected by the incident in some small (or large) way. I read several reviews that accused this book of being misogynistic, but to me it is more anti-human than anti-woman. Everyone in this novel is downright terrible, with the possible exception of two teenaged characters. (And if this is supposed to inspire an inkling of hope in readers it certainly does a luke-warm job of it.)

I didn't dislike this book, but I thought I would like it a lot more than I did. I appreciate gritty realism as much as I do idealistic literary "candy" (if you will), but The Slap is just so extreme in its unpleasantness. I do think Tsiolkas tried to give certain characters some redeemable qualities, but such traits become lost in a sea of repugnance.

Another aspect of the book that didn't really work for me is the rampant drug use. Maybe things are different in Australia, but most people I know don't exactly go around dropping E and popping speed at family barbecues with aged grandparents, etc present. And the condoning of such behaviour in teenagers by parental figures is an entirely foreign concept for me. I don't know - maybe the people I hang around are just a bunch of narcs, but I still didn't buy it.

But yeah, not a bad book all in all. Read it to feel good about your own life.