Joshua Sharp
English 3
4/20/13
Final Draft
SLAM
The novel Slam was a tricky book to understand and required more than one reading to gather the basic jest of what Nick Hornby was trying to portray in this novel for his audience. This is not Nick Hornby’s first novel, he has written many in the past and is still in the process of writing more. This novel though is a stand out from the other ones. “Slam,” is told in a first-person point of view, with Sam, the main character, allowing us into his world, providing many descriptive phrases to give us a detailed image into our minds. The novel takes place outside the spacious delightful area of London, and his residency is accompanied with his mother and a plethora of interesting neighbors. Sam has only one hobby, and that hobby happens to be skateboarding, but he calls it, “skating.” Sam has many friends as well, but his close buddies happen to be his friends, Rabbit and Rubbish. They are the kind of friends that will always have your back through thick and thin. Sam has another interesting friends, an idol actually…it is a poster on his wall of Tony Hawk. Sam says throughout the whole story that he will one day be a great skater just like Tony Hawk and hopes that one day his dream will become a reality. Sam has many detailed conversations with Tony Hawk as well, even though a poster has no way of communicating back with him, he still enjoys pouring his heart to an inanimate object that will never judge him in any way. That is kind of odd but another oddity found in this story is found in the beginning of this novel when we find out that Sam’s parents are both 32 years old which is, “younger than the average parent,” according to Sam himself. Sam has a lot on his mind though, other than his parent’s young age, he has a teenage pregnancy that he has to focus about, and he is the father, at 16 years old…repeating the same cycle that his parents had. He also worries about the fact that he was apart of an...