Christos Tsiolkas- The Slap

The Slap feels very much the novel of the moment- particularly if the waiting list at my local library is any indication. This years winner of The Commonwealth Writers Prize and one of the runners up (to Tim Winton's masterful Breath) in the Miles Franklin. Unlike that taut, razor sharp work, however, The Slap sprawls in many directions.

The narrative is peopled with a cast of characters more ethnically diverse than those encountered on an average visit to Preston Markets which is, one suspects, the point- the novel being set in Melbourne's inner north. Thankfully, my weekly, multicultural shop at the markets doesn't come with the weighty dose of inter-racial tension on display in this book.

The Slap is broken into eight chapters, each written from the point of view of a different character, and deals with the aftermath of a backyard barbecue gone wrong. A man slaps a child not his own. The child, admittedly, is a monster, apparently ineptly parented and out of control. The story cleverly has your allegiances shifting back and forth on this pivotal issue. Did the child deserve to be slapped? Should a child ever be struck? Will I ever be able to afford an enormous TV and a house in Northcote?

The Slap is certainly compelling and it took me a while to work out exactly why that was. Eventually I realised that it reads like the script of a racy TV soap- that's what keeps you turning the pages. This is perhaps a good thing because the majority of the characters are so unsympathetic and unlikable that I don't think I'd want to spend time with any of them, outside the pages of a novel. In terms of the prose on display, the Tim Winton book is a useful frame of reference. Breath is elegant and spare where The Slap is at times messy and ragged. It's structure does successfully convey the eight distict voices with great conviction but, paradoxically, some of the best writing is found in the passages that wander off-message. Despite this, it would, however, have been a tighter narrative had it restricted itself to the repercussions of the titular incident, rather than some of the unrelated minutia of the characters lives.

It's a page turner and left me thinking about the issues raised long after finishing but The Slap also left me vaguely unsatisfied- a bit like a High Street Kebab...