The Slap – Christos Tsiolkas

This novel has been a huge hit in Australia, possibly thanks to its high-concept sales pitch; at a suburban Melbourne barbecue a naughty child is slapped by an adult who is not his parent. Cue a range of reactions, told through the consecutive narratives of 8 different characters in turn.

I was irritated by the unlikely cultural mix of those attending the occasion, which seemed designed simply to make the author’s job easier. There’s a Greek family, an aboriginal bloke, an Indian woman, a white muslim, a gay boy etc.

The book bends over backwards to establish its specific cultural environment (numerous references to Broken Social Scene CDs, Wild At Heart posters and so on) but I simply didn’t accept that these characters really exist, or at least if they do exist then they don’t hang out together. There is also an irritating tendency to briefly bring up social issues like 9/11 or boat people without any insight at all, seemingly just to give the book a superficially edgy, contemporary feel.

Most egregious, though, is the sexual obsession exhibited by every character here, which gets really tedious. There are multiple sexual couplings, all described in the same flat, mechanical prose that can only remind one of pornography. The only time I laughed while reading The Slap was when, in all seriousness, the phrase “like a jackhammer” cropped up.

I note with relief that this was lost when the 2010 Booker longlist was reduced to a shortlist. Its inclusion would have been an embarrassment.