In light of recent events
Who’s preferencing whom?November 2008
Arts & Letters
‘The Slap’ by Christos Tsiolkas
The blurb on my copy of Christos Tsiolkas's new novel tells me that it's about the modern family. But most of the book's main characters are carrying frustration, anger and rage to a remarkable, even exaggerated, extent: surely the modern family isn't as strongly marked by aggression as these lives are?
The Slap, then, is about aggression and disappointment. It begins with a barbecue, during which a man slaps someone else's young child. As the narration shifts between eight characters, we see the protagonists' responses to the incident and its effects on their relationships. Tsiolkas uses evocative detail and great dialogue to create eight distinctive and convincing voices. I felt as if I'd spent time with real people; but because of this, I found myself wishing that I liked some of them a bit more.
There is a defeated, constrained and disillusioned world view that permeates the novel and makes a good many of its characters unappealing. Reflecting on her marriage, a woman describes love as "the surrender of two individuals to the messy, banal, domestic realities of sharing a life together", adding that only the young and deluded would want or expect more from it than safety. This kind of world-weary, almost self-congratulatory disillusionment surfaces more than once in characters who are too passive to alter their lives.
By contrast, we meet two teenagers, best friends Connie and Richie, who are grappling with how they fit into the world, who they are, and how they relate to others. Despite facing difficulties, they are open and positive. The narrative is at its strongest in these two sections, when we see Tsiolkas's sophisticated development of the friends' inner lives, and watch them struggle to understand their situations with more subtlety than any of the other characters.
The Slap is powerfully written and sometimes engrossing; its characters are vivid; there is a strong sense of place and culture. But in the end, the book left me wanting more: the resonance that would give it greater meaning.
Ghost notes: Simon Tedeschi’s ‘Fugitive’
A virtuoso memoir of music and trauma, and his experiences as a child prodigy, from the acclaimed Australian pianist
The quip and the dead: Steve Toltz’s ‘Here Goes Nothing’
A bleakly satirical look at death and the afterlife from the wisecracking author of ‘A Fraction of the Whole’
Election special: Who should you vote for?
Undecided about who to vote for in the upcoming federal election? Take our quiz to find out your least-worst option!
The quip and the dead: Steve Toltz’s ‘Here Goes Nothing’
A bleakly satirical look at death and the afterlife from the wisecracking author of ‘A Fraction of the Whole’Ghost notes: Simon Tedeschi’s ‘Fugitive’
A virtuoso memoir of music and trauma, and his experiences as a child prodigy, from the acclaimed Australian pianist
One small step: ‘Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood’ and ‘Deep Water’
Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped film evokes the optimism of late-1960s America, while Patricia Highsmith’s thriller gets another disappointing adaptation
Art heist: The landmark conviction of an Aboriginal art centre’s manager
The jailing of Mornington Island Art’s chief executive for dishonest dealing has shone a light on ethics and colonialism in the Indigenous art world
‘Loveland’
Robert Lukins’ second novel takes a Brisbane woman to Nebraska, where an inheritance sparks a change in character as well as in fortune
‘We Own This City’
David Simons, creator of ‘The Wire’, returns to Baltimore for a present-day examination of rapacious police corruption
‘Slow Horses’
A sardonic Gary Oldman heads a misfit branch of MI5 in Apple TV+’s thrilling exploration of personal motivation and political expedience
‘The Golden Cockerel’
Barrie Kosky’s Adelaide production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera satirising the Russo-Japanese War came with uneasy resonancesElection special: Who should you vote for?
Undecided about who to vote for in the upcoming federal election? Take our quiz to find out your least-worst option!
Remembrance or forgetting?
The Australian War Memorial and the Great Australian Silence
Property damage
What will it take for Australia to fix the affordable housing crisis?
Present indicative: Daniel Johns’ ‘FutureNever’
The former Silverchair frontman’s second solo album lacks cohesion, but affords him space to excavate his past
