Book #61: The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I first heard about this book ten years ago, and only just got around to reading it. In the book's first chapter, a father slaps another parents' child while at a gathering, and much of the book revolves around the other characters' responses.
This book was a little different from what I expected; while the aftermath of the child getting slapped continues throughout the narrative, the story does not entirely revolve around it, and there is a lot going on.
First off, every chapter is told from a different point of view, continuing the narrative, but each feels more like a novella in its own right. Most chapters have at least a brief mention of the slapping incident, and it raises a few good points about peoples' ways of thinking in modern times about how to behave towards kids. There is the question of whether the adult's behaviour was too harsh, or completely unnecessary, but on the other hand, the child who gets slapped often comes across as obnoxious (at more than one point it is mentioned that he was about to hit another kid); this is made more obvious with another incident later on in the book.
The other thing I noticed with reading narratives told from different characters' points of view was that just about everyone in this book seems to have been intentionally made to be at best flawed, and at worst absolutely obnoxious. There are characters who have affairs behind their partners' backs, one with an underage girl (and the sexual content is often told in detail so graphic, this often feels like an erotic novel) and one character even subjects his wife to domestic violence.
The characters receive no comeuppance for their behaviour; people live their lives and move on, but for me, it seems to add to the realism, by having characters stay in often toxic relationships. It's not so much as a story about people getting what they deserve for often despicable acts, but a portrayal of how a group of characters are reading their lives.
While the book often felt quite dense (every character is given a detailed backstory), I found myself enjoying every moment of it, and can see why it was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize when it was first written.
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