In The Slap, suburban couple Hector and Aisha throw a backyard barbecue for friends and family. Aisha’s friends include Rosie and Gary and their 4-year old son, Hugo. Hugo is an uber brat who gets totally out of line, has a temper tantrum and is about to bash another kid in the head with a cricket bat until Hector’s cousin intervenes and smacks the child across the face. And that’s when all hell breaks loose.
Each chapter in The Slap is told by one of the witnesses, with Hector kicking it off to relay the incident with Hugo and the immediate aftermath of Rosie and Gary filing criminal assault charges. Other narrators include Harry, the slapper; Connie, a high-schooler who works part time in Aisha’s veterinary clinic; Connie’s gay friend, Ritchie; Hector’s father, Manolis; and Hugo’s mother, Rosie.
In the process of advancing the plot, the rotating narrators provide insights into each of the characters and how they interrelate. One such way is through rampant adultery – it’s like American Beauty in this neighborhood. Connie and Hector are having an affair. Aisha is sleeping with a married man from Canada. Harry is sleeping around all over the place.
The other is through their reactions to violence, which proves to be far more complicated than a cut-and-dry question of whether Hugo deserved to be smacked (he totally did).
At their core, all the characters are selfish and terrified of adult responsibility. The teens are afraid of the unknowns ahead as they prepare for relationships, living on their own and college life. The adults want to revisit salad days of youth with multiple casual sex partners and avoided obligations. Even Hugo the four-year-old is adamant in his refusal to stop breast feeding. (Note to my lady readers out there….if your kid is old enough to ask for breast milk, they’re too old to receive it. I don’t care what happens in an African village. Africans breast feed older children because they have scarce food resources and milk is a predictable staple. We do not. It’s not OK. Read Freud.)
But even though they are selfish, the characters do have their moments. Aisha in particular comes across with great likability. She’s having an affair, but it’s really an attempt to lash out at her husband, who she knows is cheating, too. She’s bedrock for her family, even taking a strong role when her husband confesses his infidelity and turns into a blubbering mess in need of her emotional support to cope with problems of his own making.
Others are despicable. Harry is a total pig cavorting about town as though it’s rutting season. He adds to that “charm” with a dose of wife beating, which explains why his BBQ slap becomes so polarizing. Regardless of whether or not the kid deserved it, there’s concern that Harry may have moved on from beating his wife to beating children. Rosie and Gary are both naïve hypocrites who are completely dislikable. She’s a hippy-dippy earth mother who will overcoddle her child into sociopathy. He’s a bitter, drunken, failed artist that can’t be bothered to care about his family unless they give him an excuse to attack others who are more successful than he is (read everyone!).
The subjects are crude, but the larger point is to show the malaise of modern suburbia and the frustration that comes with parenthood, the constant quest for financial or career superiority, the pining for a life without obligation. But each character is victim only to their own choices. Part of the charm behind The Slap is that the author never pretends that’s not the reality - none of the characters has an epiphany, no one sees the light and reforms. By the time you’re a 40-year-old married homeowner with kids, it’s frankly too late for a do-over.
No comments:
Post a Comment