I have just updated my original review of The Slap on Goodreads.
I wanted to read The Slap after reading that it was written with eight distinctive voices. The novel also won a boatload of awards.
It is split into eight sections, with each section written from a different POV. The voices are distinctive in their hopes and concerns, but all of them seemed hopelessly compromised and unhappy, except for the man who did the slapping, who was a deluded materialist and adulterer. The advertising world had told him exactly what he should be, and he was happy getting it.
The most interesting character was Aisha, a beautiful, poised woman whom people envied, but inside she was as insecure and unhappy as the other characters. One reason she wanted to stay with her husband was that they looked so good together.
When I started reading the book, I hoped that the author would not go for the cliché of having the slapper being abused as a child by his parents, but he did. The only other violence in the novel also came from a character who had a dysfunctional family.
As I read the book, I was reminded of the characters in John Updike’s novel Couples, written nearly 50 years ago. It would seem that the middle class has not come very far in nearly half a century.
A good book, but not a great one, as the plot sagged towards the end once the Slap’s consequences had been dealt with. In fact, it is more of a character study than a novel with a tension-filled plot.
[PS] Over the years, I find myself thinking about this novel, and one of the things that really stood out was the fact that all the characters put up a false persona to the world, usually of happiness and control, when in fact they felt neither. It reinforces my thinking that, in reality, we are all guilty of such false personas. (This is also the case in Updike’s Couples, which I have since learnt is one of Tsiolkas’ favourite novels.)
Consequently, I have increased my rating of the novel.