The Slap

Can I just say, I loved this book. Right through from beginning to end, it made you question your own beliefs and puts you in a truly difficult confrontation with social acceptabilities about whether or not you should hit a child, no matter about the situation. However, I also got thoroughly grossed out; the majority of it is sex sex sex, and not the good kind.

It all starts off at a suburban barbecue in rural Australia, where several children are playing cricket. One of the younger ones refuses to come out of the game, even though everyone knows that he was out. So when another child tells him to stop ruining the game and just get out, he raises the cricket bat in an attempt to whack the other boy. And so, naturally, the other boy's father wants to protect his child. So what does he do? He slaps the unruly child around the face. The child's parents call the police. There is a massive court trial. They lose. We see it through the eyes of eight people who not only witnessed the event, but were emotionally connected to it.

The TV programme

Perhaps one is inclined to hate the other boy's father because he did something socially unacceptable. But when we consider the actual circumstances, and what the child was doing before the event, we come to be completely unsure about what we know any more. The end of the book left me wanting so much more than I got! When I saw the slap through other people's perspectives, I realized that there is so much more to a situation than meets the eye at first glance. It made me appreciate all the more what happens in a court trial and just how far they need to go to reach the "truth". Next I'll be reading The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall, so I'll keep you posted!