It tests friendships, marriages and family relationships, and it divides people into two distinct groups: those that think the child deserved it, and those that think the slap constitutes child abuse. This one event is to have drastic repercussions on all of those people present. The titular slap happens at a family barbecue, when a man slaps a bratty four-year-old child who does not belong to him. Tsiolkas, an Australian author of Greek parentage, sets his latest door-stopper in Melbourne’s middle-class suburbia. But how many of us would step in and slap a child that doesn’t belong to us? That quintessential 21st century moral dilemma is at the heart of Christos Tsiolkas‘ award-winning novel, The Slap. We’ve all experienced those dreadfully uncomfortable moments when a misbehaving child is left to run riot in a public place, perhaps a park or a restaurant or a shop, while the parents are oblivious to the commotion or are unable to control it. Fiction – paperback Allen & Unwin 483 pages 2009.
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