Slam!
A uthors aren’t your typical celebrities – you won’t see them on the red carpet or on the cover of Heat. If Nick Hornby passed you on the street, you probably wouldn’t look twice, but he’s right up there with J.K. Rowling on the list of Britain’s most popular authors. Still never heard of him? Well, remember the film About a Boy, starring Hugh Grant and a young Nicholas Hoult (before he played Tony on Skins)? What about High Fidelity, the film where Jack Black made his hilarious major debut? Both of them were based on Nick Hornby books, so you might know more about him than you thought. He’s great for many reasons, but etc. especially loves how he writes about everyday things – from being an Arsenal fan to growing up with a single parent – in such an entertaining way. He’s a fantastic read, which is why we’re over the moon for his newest release, Slam – it’s his first ever teen novel and it’s really, really good.
Skateboarding into the future
If you could see into your future, would it change the decisions you make today? Most people don’t get this opportunity but Sam – Slam’s narrator – is different. He’s a regular 16-year-old in most respects, apart from the conversations he has with a poster of his hero, skating legend Tony Hawk, that hangs in his bedroom. Sometimes, Tony Hawk speaks back to him. And other times, Tony sends Sam into the future. Sound crazy? Well, Sam is right there with you – he doesn’t know how Tony Hawk can communicate through a poster. And when he first falls asleep and wakes up in the future, Sam isn’t sure whether it’s real or not. For starters, there aren’t any spaceships flying about and he’s still only 16 years old. But one thing is radically different – in the near future, he’s a dad.
OK, let’s rewind a bit, back to the beginning of the book where things aren’t so complicated. Sam lives in London with his single mum, who’s rather young because she was only 16 when she gave birth to him. The fact that Sam is the result of a teen pregnancy doesn’t bother him – after all, his mother got her qualifications and a job in the end, so he figures it couldn’t have been that bad. Plus, he’s too busy hanging out with his new girlfriend, Alicia, to worry about stuff like that. And life rolls along quite nicely for Sam, until he decides to take a risk. It seems like such a little thing – nothing compared to the tricks he attempts on a skateboard – but it changes everything.
Now, Sam and Alicia aren’t stupid characters – they know you need to wear a condom during sex to prevent pregnancy and STI’s, but this one time, they forget. Looking back, Sam doesn’t even understand how it happened, and as the son of a teenage mum he feels like a real idiot. He’s also got a horrible feeling that Alicia’s pregnant. This is when Tony Hawk first blasts him into the future, where everything looks the same except for the crying baby and his miserable, tired girlfriend. Sam is shocked to see how much his life has changed in just a few months.
Babies vs. iPods
‘In all of my books, I think I’m looking for the fairly ordinary moments of pressure and disruption in fairly ordinary lives,’ says Nick Hornby about his choice to write about Sam. ‘And to become a father at 16 – well, it’s so extraordinary, and yet so common,’ he continues. ‘It’s very rich material – it’s sad, but it has elements of comedy in it too.’
It’s a tough subject, but there’s plenty to smile about in Slam, like when Sam and Alicia go to the chemist to buy a pregnancy test and get spotted by a friend of their parents. Sam says: ‘you could tell she thought we’d gone in to buy condoms. Ha! Condoms! We were way beyond condoms, missus!’ Though Sam never loses his sense of humour – even through the horrors of telling their parents – he has to deal with the fact that life will soon become harder. Just a month before, he was looking forward to college and now he has to decide whether that will be possible with a child.
‘We have to make more young people understand that further education and/or vocational training – much harder to cope with if you’re a parent – is vital, desirable and achievable,’ says Nick. etc. asks if he was ever scared about getting a girl pregnant when he was younger. ‘The reason I was so scared of getting someone pregnant when I was in my teens was that I had a sense of hope for myself,’ explains Nick. ‘So I’m guessing that young people who get pregnant despite the relative availability of both contraception and abortion don’t feel that same sense.’
Whatever the reason, the UK has the highest teenage pregnancy rates in all of Europe, which shows that there are lots of people out there who are choosing to become young parents. Why is this happening? And is it for the right reasons? Sam wonders the same thing:
There were a couple of young mums at my school, and they acted like a baby was an iPod or a new mobile or something…There are many differences between a baby and an iPod. And one of the biggest differences is, no one’s going to mug you for your baby.
etc. wants to point out another obvious difference – iPods are much cheaper than children (and you don’t have to change its dirty nappy, either). ‘If anyone thinks that being a parent without money is cool or in any way fun,’ says Nick, ‘maybe we should let them listen to people who’ve been down that road.’
Modern classic
Reading about Sam’s struggle to come to terms with fatherhood is enough to make anyone use three condoms at a time. But there’s more to this story than just pregnancy scares – Slam is about normal people living right now, right here in the UK, which makes it really fun to read. We all know that Shakespeare and Charles Dickens were great writers, but sometimes it can be difficult to understand their old-fashioned language and storylines. With Slam, you’ll probably be able to relate to a lot of what goes on. Maybe you’ll even see a bit of yourself in Sam as he deals with things like losing his virginity, getting into a fight, deciding what to study and being unfairly judged by some adults. You might even know what it’s like to find out that you or your partner is pregnant.
Eternal youth
You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you’d be correct in assuming that Nick Hornby is not a skateboarding 16-year-old – in fact, far from it (sorry, Nick). So etc. wonders how he manages to sound like one in the book. ‘It’s always difficult to assume the voice of anyone who is not exactly the same as oneself,’ explains Nick. ‘I usually write in the first person [from the ‘I’ perspective – etc.], which means thinking about the language, and the emotional responses, and the frames of reference. And once I’ve thought about that, then I try to hear a voice. I really didn’t worry about or bother with teen slang, because it dates so quickly, and I think teenagers are particularly suspicious of an older person who’s trying it on in that way.’
Of course, Nick was once a teenager, just like every other grown-up on the planet. And being a teenager in the 70s couldn’t have been that different from being one today – right? ‘I think there are a lot of things that I didn’t have to deal with back then,’ says Nick. ‘It can’t be easy watching older people fail to confront climate change, which may well make young people’s lives much, much harder in the future. And the recent epidemic of teen murders is horrifying. Kids in some parts of some cities must be walking around wondering whether they are about to be confronted by someone carrying a knife, or even a gun. That seems to me something new.’
Back to the future
etc. is still thinking about whether we’d look into our future if we had the choice. We can’t decide, and so we ask Nick if he would change anything about the way he lived his teenage years, knowing what he does now. ‘I’d have worried less, probably. I didn’t really know what I was doing…and that got me down sometimes,’ says Nick. ‘I’m not sure I’d have done anything differently, though. I’m happy enough with the way things turned out, and for things to turn out that way, it means living the same life over again – unfortunately!’
etc. knows that life can throw you some tough challenges. Most of us will never see into the future, which means all we can do is make the best decisions we can right now, in the present. But if you’re ever feeling confused, take comfort in the fact that at one stage, a world-famous author had no idea what to do, either.
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