If Neighbours was a bicycle and modern Australian literature was one of those guys that pulls discarded bikes out of the creek and rejigs them for sale, The Slap might be the renovated Malvern Star you’d buy at Ceres.
It’s basically a soapie. Compelling, compulsive, absorbing – just like Desperate Housewives. I read it in just two sittings and it took up most of my weekend – just like the West Wing DVDs.
Eight representative Melburnians share the ramifications when a Greek businessman slaps a bratty three year old. This is a fabulous premise – literally, a barbeque stopper.
I also thrilled at the amount of action set in my own hood. Every time a character walked down High Street I gave a smug little smile.
Some of the characters are beautifully drawn – the chapter on Manolis, the elderly Greek man, brought tears to my eyes. Others, such as the Indian vet called Aisha, come across as a bit more cardboard.
Tsiolkas is trying to be all things to all men in this book. Unfortunately, that’s what lets it down. I found the female characters lacked much life. I just didn’t believe that Tsiolkas knows what it’s like to throw up with morning sickness – for the record, it is nothing like when you spew from a hangover. It’s more like you’ve eaten a bag of highlighter pens and 5 cent coins and now can’t stop belching.
I also found the sex scenes all very irritating and very much written with a gay male sensibility. By about page 300 I didn’t want to hear about any more thick cocks or fumbling for rubbers or thrusting anythings. Modelling safe sex is all very noble, but how many married couples in their early 40s rely on condoms for contraception? Come on, Christos, girls have this thing called The Pill. When you’re female, straight and monogamous (ish) the biggest thing on your mind isn’t STDs, it’s pregnancy, and you ain’t going to rely on your hubby’s fumbling for anything to protect you from that.
I think Tsiolkas writes beautiful Greek male first person narrative. His eye for pathos and tragedy and comedy and all those other Greek things is first class – as you’d expect! But he just doesn’t have the broadness of vision to write convincing female and Anglo characters. To read this book, you’d think there was hardly an Anglo to be seen in Melbourne’s north. An Aboriginal Muslim convert? It all seemed a little ponderous.
If this book was a person, it would be a multicultural officer in charge of diversity policies at Darebin Council attending her monthly Book Club meeting while wearing a beret and scribbling mysteriously in a moleskin notebook.
In a nutshell: a man slaps a bratty three year old at a backyard BBQ and repercussions multiply,
The Slap scores seven tasty chocolates out of a possible ten, but none of them are rare, expensive truffles.
