currently reading: the slap
Along with the wonderful V, I am reading The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas. So far, I am hard pressed to think of a novel I have enjoyed less.
The novel apparently examines “identities and personal relationships in a multicultural society” and “taps into universal tensions and dilemmas around family life and child-rearing”. So far, though, I have found the ‘multicultural society’ to be utterly contrived (roll call: indian, greek, anglo saxon, aboriginal, jewish, christian, muslim, working class, young, old, feminist, sexist, etc etc etc) and the ‘tensions’ and ‘dilemmas’ to be predominantly the product of characters who come across as fundamentally unpleasant, selfish, self-obsessed people with few, if any redeeming characteristics. I remain hopeful that the next chapter will contain a bus crash which finishes the lot of them off.
If this is contemporary, multicultural Australia then I want out.
Hmmm, I think I’ll leave that one off my reading list. This caught my eye because at brunch yesterday one of my friends had the same comment as you!
Hehe – I am in a book club and we met yesterday. I was thinking I might be out on a limb over this one but no, everyone hated it as much as me. The girl who picked it was very apologetic, having not read it beforehand.
I must confess to only getting about 2/3rds the way through it – there are too many good books in the world to waste your time with the mediocre or bad ones!