"Slam" by Nick Hornby

The book ”Slam” is written by the author Nick Hornby.
Nick H. was born the 17th of April 1957 in Maidenhead, England. He went to Cambridge University to study English literature. After School Nick Hornby teached foreign students in English. He also worked for the company Samsung before he started as a freelance journalist and author in 1983. His first book, “fever pitch” came out in 1992, and his last, at least for now, is the book I’ve read, “Slam” it came out in 2007.

The book is about a boy called Sam. He loves to skate (skateboarding, not ice skating). He lives with his mum in London (The story takes place in modern time). His mum and dad were only sixteen and seventeen years old when they got Sam, and they couldn’t handle living together, so they got divorced. Sam does the same mistake as his parents, and gets a son called Rufus at an age of 16. Sam has a lot of thoughts about his future, but having a baby is not one of them. Alicia, Sam’s girlfriend lives with both of her parents, Andrea and Robert Burns. Their both from the upper class, and gets furious when Sam and Alicia tells them that Alicia is pregnant. They all go together to tell Sam’s mother. The best way of telling how she reacted is probably; she started to cry, a lot! I’m not going to tell you more, cause that would ruin the fun of reading the book, but I can tell you that a lot of things are happening.

The Characters:

- Sam, as I told you, is a nice boy who loves skating and girls. Sam kind of freaks out when Alicia tells him she’s pregnant, but after a while he takes to his senses and take it like a man

- Alicia is described as a gorgeous girl. Her parents have big plans for her, but she has other plans. She wants to be a model. Alicia is deeply in love with Sam.

- Annie (Sam’s mother), is described as a mother the boys at Sam’s age fancy. She raised Sam all alone after Sam’s father ran away. Annie doesn’t want Sam to do the same mistake as she did.

- Andrea (Alicia’s mother) is a councillor, and is kind of snobby. She thinks the baby’s last name should be Rufus Burns instead of Rufus Jones, because the baby would do better in life then.

- Robert (Alicia’s father) is a college professor; Robert is the most sensible persons in the book. He doesn’t say much, and that’s probably the reason why he seem so sensible.


Topics:
- Relationships
- Bad things become good things
- being a teenager
- Teenage parenting

These are all were important subjects, and Nick H. write in a funny/ironic way some times, and this makes it easier to read and understand.

I would recommend this book for people over 15 years. The book is a bit hard to understand some times, but you can't get to old to read this book. There are a lot we can learn from a story like this.