Join Christos Tsiolkas to talk about THE SLAP - our March Book of the Month - on Weds 23 March, 8-9pm

[TillyBookClub]

Our March Book of the Month has inflamed critics, readers and journalists across the world. The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, is also a Top Ten bestseller in the UK, Australia and Canada. A zeitgeist-capturing exploration of multiculturalism and the limitations of liberal values, it will definitely provoke some strong reactions...

Atlantic books are offering 100 copies of The Slap to Mumsnetters. To bag your copy before they run out, please email [email protected] with your full postal address and "Mumsnet The Slap offer" in the email subject line.

We'll post on this thread once the copies have all been sent out but if you're not lucky enough to bag a free copy, buy it here instead.

We are delighted that Christos will be joining us on Wednesday 23 March, 8-9 pm, for the bookclub discussion - look forward to seeing you all there...

Tilly thanks for organising this again, I will endeavour to make it this time.

Tilly I've sent my email to Sarah and had an "out of office until 1st March" response, the poor girl will be inundated with emails when she gets back to work!!

Same here.

Don't worry, Sarah is keeping an eye on her mail from home and will let us know once she's had 100 responses. She's definitely getting your mails.

i think she's taken her 'out of office' off... either that or I e-mailed completely the wrong woman...

oh, no. i lied. junk box.

so we're not supposed to e-mail nicolas then?

Oh.. It says email Nicholas...? So I did as Sarah told me.

I sent Sarah an email earlier but didn't get an out of office .... but mine was about 1.30 so maybe she skipped off after that ....

Have just sent my email to sarah, hope I am not too late. I didn't get a copy of Room last month despite requesting it the minute I got the email

I emailed before midday and didn't get an out of office reply - so haven't emailed Nicolas (whoever he is)

Arrrrg - just got the out of office message???

Really hope I get this one. I missed out on the room

Just to let you know that Atlantic have been in touch this evening and have had over 350 requests already for the free books, so the offer is no longer open. For those who have emailed, to give you some idea (although I can't be exact) they had reached the 100 free books by about 14.30 this afternoon. I know a few people received an out of office notice from Sarah - don't worry, she's accessed all emails that were sent to her.

Sorry to those who weren't successful - there will be more free book offers coming up - and please don't let it stop you from joining the book club discussion this month - you can buy it from Amazon for £7.77

Oh no looks like I'll of missed out again.

Ditto. A most underwhelming book. I could not sympathise with a single character in there.

hmm

i will be interested to read the discussion on this

i found it mysogynistic and a tad gratuitous to say the least

the slap is a secondary theme IMO

interesting comparisons to be made wrt the role of bf in this book and in Room...

God this was one of least favourite reads of all time. Nasty characters, misogynistic and gratuitously violent. Can't recommend it.

Just to add an alternative point of view, I loved this book from the very first page. It made me laugh a lot, I enjoyed every one of the deeply flawed characters and it made me reflect on my own experience of multiculturalism/ 'issues' of today. I look forward to joining in with the chat.

I wouldn't pay to read it. Treat yourself to something else with the £7.77.

Was he going for some sort of record for using the words "cock" and "cunt" the most frequently in a mid-length novel?

The book reads like a sex-obsessed pimply Young Conservative with Tourettes

ugly, grubby little book

see, now i don't know whether to be glad i e-mailed after 1430, or not...

I am with defineme - all the characters were flawed, so it made it difficult to empathise, but that was (I pesume) the point. I found it a good read.

Odd choice for bookclub, I think, given that 99% of readers hate it... I'm not sure if it's enough of a justification to say "well, we know we're going to get some strong reactions" - it would be nice for a bookclub book to be one that people might actually like. Oh well.

Do 99% of readers hate it?
I have a book group with 10 members, all female 30s/40s from Midlands, and we all enjoyed it. We found it kicked off a really interesting discussion about our experiences of immigrant communities and also our opinions of modern parenting 'issues'.
One or two of the group blanched at the language and rawness of some of the characters, but didn't find it a good enough reason to stop reading the book and found that they got past that.
I think it's one of the longest discussions we've had and that reflects the breadth of the book.
I did actually have empathy with the teenage characters and, if I'm honest, aspects of some of the adults.