About A Boy...

Hello again! :)
That's him:

The British author Nick Hornby while reading "Slam".

Born on 17th April 1957 in Redhill, Surrey (UK) and educated at Cambridge University (English) and Highbury (Football/Facts of Life), he previously worked as English teacher, TEFL teacher, Host for Samsung executives visiting the UK, Journalist and Pop Music Critic for the New Yorker.

"I started by writing plays. They were sort of screen-cum-radio-cum-TV plays, and they weren't very good … When I left university and I tried to write, everything came out sounding like bad essays, so I thought I should stick to dialogue. I hadn't done enough reading-not of the things I wanted to emulate-so it took me a while, a long while, to grapple with voice … everything changed for me when I read Anne Tyler, Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, and Lorrie Moore, all in about '86-'87 … voice, tone, simplicity, humour, soul ... all of these things seemed to be missing from the contemporary English fiction I'd looked at, and I knew then what I wanted to do."

That's a citation from his official website http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/minisites/nickhornby/index.html .
In this statement Nick Hornby tells about a turning point in his life. And after this point there were many very successful books created.
It says that „Slam“ is vintage Hornby for teenagers and I think this is right. I haven't read the book yet, but because of other Nick Hornby-Books, I am able to figure that Nick Hornby is often writing about youth and Pop-Culture. And I think also "Slam" is about this topics.

Here are some more Web links dealing with Nick Hornby:
http://www.nicksbooks.com
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth51
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Hornby


At least a personnel review from Zadie Smith about Nick Hornby, for Time magazine:

 

For adding my result: Nick Hornby stayed young and because of this fact he writes the way young people understand - fresh and clearly without any fears of contacts.

If you are interested in what Nick Hornby thinks about "Slam", watch this!:

Greetings,

Yours Victoire*