Slam

Well the book started out well enough but after the first few chapters it just became too boring for me... This is the second Nick Hornby novel I read (the first one being High Fidelity) and I just don't seem to enjoy his style or story-telling very much.

Not a bad book, but it isn't the kind of book I would read again nor would I recommend it. I also didn't leave the book thinking about it. It was an interesting story, but nothing earth shattering.

Sam has grown up in the knowledge that it is a bad idea to get a kid at 16. While his mother loves him and they have a good relationship, she also told him countless times that getting pregnant with him at such a young age has changed her future for the worse. Sam tries to avoid his mother's "mistake". He is going to go to college. In his free time he loves skateboarding. His greatest idol is Tony Hawk; Sam has read his book and knows it by heart. He even talks to a poster of Tony Hawk and to Sam Tony Hawk even answers with quotations from his book. Sam's life is rapidly changing when he meets Alicia and they begin a romantic relationship. Soon Sam is in danger of following in his mother's footsteps, but Tony Hawk doesn't leave Sam in the lurch. He shows Sam his future. I have to admit that I had a few problems with this book. The main problem was that I couldn't really emphasise with Sam. This might be due to the fact that I'm older than Sam and female. This doesn't make a great difference in fantasy novels, where the focus is not so much on the protagonists "inside". In this book it was making it hard to get into it. Apart from Sam I also found the rest of the characters flat and not good developed. Alicia's parents were particularly cliché, but his mother didn't have more depth, either. The plot was also average. It was well enough but didn't offer a lot of surprises. The "future-dreams" purportedly sent by Tony Hawk were an interesting twist to the storyline but after the first one they became an old hat as well. Nicholas Hoult as the narrator did a good job at his narration, but again nothing outstanding. At the beginning I had a few problems with getting into his narration and I somehow found him an unfit narrator for this work. Somehow I couldn't imagine his voice alongside a 16-year old protagonist. This was especially difficult because the story is told from Sam's point-of-view as first-person narrator, not from a neutral third-person narrator. All in all I found this book average. There were no great faults, but it certainly didn't find its way to my heart and the possibility that I'll listen to the audiobook or read the book again is fairly slim.

Sam ist 16 Jahre alt und sein Leben besteht eigentlich nur aus skaten. In der Schule läuft alles wie gewöhnlich. Sam spielt sogar mit dem Gedanken Kunst zu studieren. Eines Tages schleppt ihn seine Mutter mit auf den Geburstag einer ihrer Freundinnen. Er soll mit deren Tochter verkuppelt werden: Alicia. Anfangs hegt Sam keine großen Hoffnungen, weil Alicia in einer anderen Liga zu spielen scheint. Ungeachtet dessen werden die beiden tatsächlich ein Paar. Doch die Harmonie währt nicht lange und zu allem Übel ist auch noch Alicias Periode längst überfällig. Da kann Sam auch das Poster von Tony Hawk keinen hilfreichen Rat mehr geben und er muss herausfinden, wie er sein zukünftiges Leben gestalten will. Nick Hornby schildert in seinem Roman auf ironische und lustige Weise, wie es ist ungewollt plötzlich Erwachsen werden zu müssen. Er schreibt mit einer sehr angenehmen Tonart: schonungslos ehrlich, aber nie belehrend. Er konzentriert sich nicht darauf, Teenager-Schwangerschaften zu kritisieren, sondern zeigt, wie sich die Beteiligten dabei fühlen und welche inneren Kämpfe sie austragen müssen. Er verdeutlicht, dass Sam und Alicia ja selbst noch Kinder sind, die mit dieser Situation vollkommen überfordert sind und erstmal einen Haufen falsche Entscheidungen treffen. Besonders Sam kann die Tragweite einer Schwangerschaft zu Beginn überhaupt nicht erfassen und reagiert wie ein achtjähriger: er läuft weg. Hornby schafft es mit einer unglaublichen Leichtigkeit, dem Leser diese komplizierte Situation näher zu bringen. Wobei ich den britischen Humor an manchen Stellen wohl einfach nicht teilen konnte. Die abrupten Sprünge in die Zukunft sorgen für eine Prise Fantasy und machen den Erzählfluss sehr abwechslungsreich. Im Gegensatz zu Sams Monologen über das Skaten, die zeitweise etwas zäh waren. "Slam" ist ein unterhaltsames und amüsantes Buch mit ernstem Thema, das zeigt, dass eine ungeplante Schwangerschaft keine absolute Katastrophe ist und man auftauchende Probleme schon irgendwie lösen kann.