So things were ticking along quite nicely...

A Slam is an accident while skating. So, I already expected that the content of the book „Slam“ will tell about something negative…

After reading the introducing chapter of „Slam“, my opinion about this book hasn‘t changed yet, even though now I am more informed about the plot.

For the 15-year-old narrator and main character Sam „things are ticking along quite nicely“. After a time when there had always been something wrong and something to worry about, now Sam‘s life becomes a clear line, a structure. Although his parents are divorced and had fought, now the whole situation has calmed down and also Steve, the boyfriend of Sam‘s mom, who Sam didn‘t like, has left. In school Sam is working well and in fact his chances are good to do art at college. Also a girl called Alicia is mentioned as someone who means something to him.

But in spite of everything, I think that Sam is just a teenager with teenage-problems. In my opinion he seems lonely and no one is listening to him. That‘s the reason why he prefers to talk about his problems with a Tony Hawk-Poster in lieu of talking to his mother. He takes the answers to the questions he asks Tony Hawk out of his biography „Hawk: Occupation: Skateboarder“ (see http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/0060198605.asp).

This biography has a special meaning to Sam - it‘s like his bible. After reading it about fifty times, he thinks that this it the best book ever written, mainly because Tony Hawk tells in his book about his life with all its Ups and Downs.

"If there was nothing in the book that was exactly right, then I had to make some of the sentences fit as best as I could."

He talks to Tony hawk and Tony answers him as good as he can. And Sam thinks that Tony Hawk is interested in what he tells him - and that‘s the most important fact for me, because nobody‘s really interested in what Sam does I think. Neither his mom nor anybody else cares about what great skate tricks he copes with, and which means a lot to him.

As I said, in my view Sam is just a normal teenager, whose problems many teenagers have. I am sure that I always can talk with my friends and with my parents about (almost :)) everything without being worm out. But I think many friends of mine have also the problem that they couldn‘t speak with anybody in their surroundings.
So, I think that the problem having the feeling that nobody cares about you has (or had) each of us. That has probably also been the reason for Nick Hornby to create Sam‘s person a way, almost all of his readers could identify with.


All in all I‘m really confident reading this book but I‘m a little bit worried that I won‘t have finished this book until 7th December…


Greetings,
Victoire*