Product Description

Just when everything is coming together for Sam, his girlfriend Alicia drops a bombshell. Make that ex-girlfriend—because by the time she tells him she’s pregnant, they’ve already called it quits. Sam does not want to be a teenage dad.

There’s only one person Sam can turn to—his hero, skating legend Tony Hawk. Sam believes the answers to life’s hurdles can be found in Hawk’s autobiography. But even Tony Hawk isn’t offering answers this time—or is he? In this wonderfully witty, poignant story about a teenage boy unexpectedly thrust into fatherhood, it’s up to Sam to make the right decisions so the bad things that could happen, well, don’t.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30381 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From AudioFile
Narrator Nicholas Hoult is best known as Marcus in the film version of author Nick HornbyÕs ABOUT A BOY. Now he narrates HornbyÕs latest novel while still a teenager himself--not surprisingly, he nails the tone of a Londoner whose life goes unexpectedly off the rails. Sam is obsessed with skateboarding and Tony Hawk, the worldÕs greatest skater. Life is going well--his teachers are recommending art college, and he has a beautiful girlfriend. In skating, a slam is a hard fall; in SamÕs life, the slam is unexpected fatherhood. Sam becomes a father at 16--the same age his mother had him. Hoult makes Sam an entirely believable teenager--his dialogue is slouchy, like a teenagerÕs, and his light tone maintains HornbyÕs humor. A.B. 2008 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
*Starred Review* For Hornby, author of About a Boy (1988) and High Fidelity (1995), the move from adult to young-adult fiction represents more of a natural progression than a change in course. So it should come as no surprise that he has written an accomplished teen novel featuring a character whose voice hits its groove at the downbeat and sustains it through the final chord. Sam is a disarmingly ordinary 15-year-old kid who loves to skate (that's skateboarding, to you and me). But then he is blindsided: his girlfriend gets pregnant, and he lands in the middle of his mum's nightmare (she had Sam when she was 16). This may sound like an old-fashioned realistic YA problem novel, but it's a whole lot more. Sam, you see, has a sort-of-imaginary friend: the world's greatest skater, Tony Hawk, whose poster Sam talks to when he has problems. And the poster talks back, maybe, or maybe Sam is just reciting quotes from Tony's autobiography. And is it really Tony who is "whizzing" Sam into the future for glimpses of what is to come? With or without Tony's help, Sam gives us the facts about his very eventful couple of years, but as he reminds us, "there comes a point where the facts don't matter anymore . . . because you don't know what anything felt like." Which is where Hornby comes in. We know exactly how Sam feels—even when he feels differently from the beginning of a sentence to the end—and it feels just right: a vertiginous mix of anger, confusion, insight, humor, and love. Ott, Bill

Review
...a sweet and funny story about mistakes and choices. -- VOYA

...full of pleasures that readers familiar with Hornby should recognize, such as the kooky subsidiary characters and clever off-center dialogue... -- Kirkus

...full of wit, humor and pathos. -- San Francisco Chronicle

A sure bet for Hornby fans of any age -- Publishers Weekly, starred review

A sure bet for Hornby fans of any age. -- Publishers Weekly

Hornby's witty, gentle genius shines through. -- USA Today

Hornby...shows he understands the psyche of an adolescent boy just as well as he does those of men. -- KLIATT

The characters are given the opportunity to grow with charm and wit while facing the challenges of young adulthood. -- School Library Journal

Vintage Hornby: a witty trek inside the emotional life of the modern male. -- People

Well-balanced wit and weight, prominent pop-culture placement...and an exploration of that tricky line that separates youths from adults. -- The Washington Times

Customer Reviews

For adults too
This was supposed to be teen-fiction but, as an adult Hornby fan, I had to get it. I'd say the only thing that makes it teen-fiction is that it's told in the first person by a 16 year-old boy. Other than that we still have Hornbys' clever insights and humour all the way through. It is about a boy(Sam) who gets his girlfriend (Alicia) pregnant but doesn't find out till just after he dumps her. All the pressure Sam feels to be a man when he still wants to be a kid and go skating (skateboarding- not ice skating). Sam gets whizzed into the future 2/3 times and I found this annoying and knocked a star off for it. As the book says itself- there is no real end to the story but that feels right. Being pro-abortion in these situations, it takes away some of my sympathy for the girl because she insists on having it, and Sam tries to do the right thing by backing her up. So their young lives end up in a mess. But it's an easy read with the Hornby one-liners and insights.

Puerile
Nick Hornby has always walked a fine line between seeing the humour in every day life situations and celebrating the idiocy of mainstream pop culture. While High Fidelity and a Long Way Down were laugh out loud hilarious, and packed with wit, Hornby has slowly but steadily moved to a point where his characters are so deeply embedded in the mainstream that his work is becoming nauseating for anyone who doesn't consider a viewing Pop Idols accompanied by a Big Mac to be the realisation of the profundity of the life experience.

How to Be Good was already balanced on the wrong side of the greasy schmaltz line, but Hornby crosses over completely in this awful offering that had me close to retching at times. The book is packed with pop culture references, cutesy moments and is narrated by one of Hornby's typically ambivalent protagonists. I'm not sure what else to say about it - reading to the end, as I felt compelled to do after shelling out money for a copy, was torturous and the book is just frightfully bad.

Perhaps its the total lack of appreciation of wider social context that gets to me, I get the feeling that Hornby's characters would be as comfortably at home in Nazi Germany as in Big Brother Britain, such is the depth of the unquestioning support and endorsement of the status quo.

Courtesy of Teens Read Too
Sam figures that his life is going pretty well. He's doing all right in school, he gets along with his mom, he has a great girlfriend, and is getting good at skateboarding. He has aspirations of attending college, unlike his mom, who had to drop out of school when she became pregnant with him.

But all of his dreams come crashing down when his girlfriend, Alicia, tells him that she's pregnant. And she has no intention of getting rid of the baby.

Sam spooks. He goes into denial. When that doesn't work, he tries running away, physically and emotionally. And then, an unexplainable thing happens...while he dreams at night, he gets whizzed into the future and is shown an unexpected life that will force him to face the facts and take responsibility for his actions.

SLAM is a frank, vivid, and highly realistic take on teenage pregnancy from a point of view that is completely different from what many are accustomed to. Hornby doesn't waste time by working in lectures of the consequences of premarital sex, but instead gives us Sam, who is a little selfish, very scared, a bit ashamed, but ultimately a strong character who, through many trials and despite his own feelings, manages to pull himself together and attempt to be the best dad he can be -- and is surprisingly good at it.

The more unbelievable element of the story, Sam's visits to the future, gives the story just the right dash of unique appeal without seeming too implausible. Hornby does more than just give us an intriguing account of teen parenthood; he reveals each emotion, thought, and feeling with startling clarity and humor, until you understand and empathize with Sam. SLAM is a fascinating, compelling, and even poignant read that won't soon be forgotten.

Reviewed by: The Compulsive Reader