To say that Christos Tsiolkas’s novel The Slap has created a ripple since it was first published in 2008 in his native Australia would be an understatement. The reverberations have been more akin to the slap that forms the basis of the novel, gaining momentum as time goes on. The book has been published worldwide and, as well as gathering fans and critical praise, it has managed to make it onto this year’s Man Booker longlist – a considerable feat for a wildly successful and commercially accessible novel.
When I briefly met Tsiolkas at the Edinburgh Book Festival book signing, I asked him how he felt about the phenomenal success of his fourth book. He shook his head with dazed disbelief. ‘I still can’t absorb it,’ he said.
The Slap is a rollicking soap opera set in a middle class area of Melbourne and involves a cast of colourful – and, it has to be said, mostly deeply dislikeable – characters. The catalyst for the action is the resounding slap imparted by a man on a small child who is not his, at a barbecue given by his cousin. The effects on the close-knit community are profound.
Each chapter is related in third person from the point of view of a different character. Tsiolkas allows the reader to briefly glance most of the characters at the barbecue but in-depth knowledge about them is revealed gradually in subsequent chapters, either their own or those of people close to them. There is Hector, lean and attractive son of Greek immigrants, lover of women, father of two, married to the beautiful vet Aisha. Aisha is a regal woman born of Indian parents and has never been accepted by Hector’s mother who still spittingly refers to her as ‘The Indian’. Then there is Hector’s cousin Harry, devoted husband – or is he? – and father, who imparts the slap that propels the story into action. And Rosie, earth mother who spoils and coddles her three year-old son Hugo into bratdom. Rosie’s husband is Gary, a loser alcoholic unable to hide his resentment of those who have done better than him. Connie is a receptionist at the vet clinic in which Aisha works. We find out early on that she’s been sexually involved with Hector. Anouk, a TV scriptwriter with a younger actor boyfriend, is friends with Aisha and Rosie despite unspoken tensions with Rosie. And so on.
The beauty of The Slap is that as each chapter unrolls, the reader gains multiple insights into the characters. Many are not what they seem. Most are deeply flawed. Casual misogyny, racism and homophobia pepper their dialogue and actions. But, through entirely natural means, Tsiolkas reveals the background of each character, their roots, their parents, their upbringing. We find out, for example, that although Rosie comes across as an over-protective mother, there is much more to her. Her mother was a purse-lipped puritan Calvinist, her father an alcoholic. Rosie had a wild adolescence, seeking escape through reckless casual sex, and despite her appearance as a doting mother, it took her weeks to take to her new role as mother. After an initial period of being unable to bear her baby, she made a descision to throw out her old persona, that of the beautiful girl, and embrace the new, hence the wholeheartedness with which she pursues her earth mother role.
Tsiolkas manages to make the characters believable and fascinating. None of them are angels, but by the same token, none of them are complete ogres either. Here is humanity in the shades of grey with which it appears in the real world. Harry, for example, revealed as a racist man with a streak of deeply suppressed violence at his core, is capable of long-term infidelity. Yet most of the time – when calm – he reveres his wife Sandi, and he is also capable of spontaneous kind deeds like allowing a junior employee time off at short notice. It’s a relief to read a novel where characters are not completely black and white, even if their faults outweigh their virtues considerably.
Much of the enjoyment of this novel comes from the creeping nature of revelations about the characters and their complexity. We reel in shock as we see the other side of the benevolent husband Harry. Relationships that seem stable and ordinary from the outside are revealed to be riddled with hidden faultlines. It’s a realistic and engaging touch. How many of us on seeing an elderly couple together think ‘How sweet’, or other such patronising thoughts. It’s absorbing and revealing to be privy to the complex interior of such relationships, to see that people of any age are capable of rage, jealousy, hatred, love, regret and so on. And, just as in life, people are driven to say and do things on impulse, things which may have far-reaching effects. A lie told in a moment of anger, an action taken in an instant of guilt, these are the ostensibly small events that dictate the direction in which lives travel. It may not be a flattering portrait of humankind but you only have to watch the news to see that many people are not altruistic and benevolent.
But despite the ugliness of much of the behaviour, love, loyalty and friendship are as prominent as infidelity, bigoted views and deceit. And Tsiolkas has cleverly ensured that the younger generation, as represented by Connie and Richie, have rejected many of the viler aspects of the older characters.
The one section that didn’t ring true for me was the resolution of the explosion that occurs at the end of the novel from a lie Connie has told earlier. There was a touch of the unfeasibly swift forgiving and lack of consequences about it, something that sat at odds with Tsiolkas’s relentlessly realistic pursuit of results of impulsive actions in the rest of the book. It smacks of a neat and tidy tying up of ends with an implausible absence of ill-feeling from those you’d expect to react. It would have been more credible if the person the lie was pinned on had his relationship with an couple of other characters severed or cooled as a result. But this is only a tiny part of the whole so didn’t detract from my great enjoyment of the novel.
I loved The Slap. Accessible, gripping, addictive and insightful, it’s a journey through the lives of others; salacious in some parts, touching in others. To those who say it’s stuffed full of sex and profanities, I say that life is too. If you baulk at frequent use of the f and c words you might be better to hold off. For those of a less delicate disposition, The Slap is a meditation on the human condition wrapped up as a tacky bauble.
