For whatever reason, she takes this to heart and starts being much nicer to him. She starts being a bit rude to him and he tells her so (he also says she thinks she can get away with it because she’s beautiful). The daughter, Alicia, turns out to be gorgeous and Sam is instantly taken with her. Sam’s mom convinces Sam to go to a party with her for a friend she works with (this woman has a daughter about Sam’s age and Sam’s mom thinks he might be interested in meeting her). His parents split up about ten years ago and it’s obvious from the beginning that his dad isn’t much of a dad. Sam’s mom got pregnant with him when she was 16 and is always lecturing him about how it sort of ruined her life (not in a mean way, amazingly he and his mom are quite close). And from what I hear about his other books, that’s mostly Hornby’s style. But really? This book is also dang depressing. If you can’t go clubbing with your mum, then what use is she?”).

It had a some really funny funny bits (like when Sam goes on a date with a girl who wants to get pregnant really young because “I don’t want to be like fifty when he’s sixteen? You can’t go out with them then, can you? To clubs and that?” and Sam thinks, “Oh yeah, I wanted to say. Slam by Nick Hornby was a quick read and very engaging. I’ve never read anything by Nick Hornby and didn’t even recognize his name when I picked up Slam at the library (for those of you equally uninformed, he wrote About a Boy which later was made into a movie starring Hugh Grant).

Slam nick hornby review