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...

Reading the posts earlier on, I was intrigued by BodyofEyeore's comment saying 'do you think people would react differently to the book if it were set in England'.

Do you think there is a specifically Australian angle to your novel, and the issues it explores? Do you think it might have been a very different novel were it set in the UK?

And do you, like BodyofEyeore asks, believe that British people might have different reactions were it set in their own country?

@defineme

Hi Christos, I really enjoyed the book (see my earlier posts!) and was hoping you'd be able to tell me which novels you've enjoyed recently?

I have made a discovery of a great Belgian writer from the mid-20th century called Marguerite Yourcenar. I feel ashamed that I had not heard of her earlier. Her Memoirs of Hadrian is one of the finest books I have ever read, it makes you feel that you are right there at the moment when the ancient world is beginning its decline. I am madly now reading through her other work. I love that there are still discoveries to be made. Reading her makes me want to be a better writer.

There is an Australian actor and scriptwriter called Brendan Cowell and his first novel, How it Feels, I really liked, it is raw and honest. I loved reading Patti Smith's Just Kids, that too made me hungry to do good work.

Hi Christos,

i really loved ur book - i had heard so much about it and didn't think i was going to, but was suprised to stay up late reading it!! My question is that Hector seemed to start out a strong character with definate opinions and thoughts on his life, but by end he seemed faded and withdrawn, i wonder if u had thought about another chapter on Hector and Aisha to focus on the effects of their affairs on their marriage?

Thank you

@MrsKwazii

Evening/Morning! If I may sneak another general Q in. Which book by another author would you have loved to have written and why?

A good hard question. I'm just going to go with the first book that comes to mind and it is Hemingway's A Moveable Feast - it paints so well the dreams and frustrations and freedom of being a young unknown writer wanting to take on the world. It is a young person's book, full of vitality. I couldn't write it now, it needs a young person's hand.

I LOVE that your dad bought you Mills and Boon along with Dickens. I am going to try that with my three boys.

What was your parents reaction to the book?

Yeia sou, Christos - I posted this yesterday, but I think it may have got lost in the batch of questions that you got through during the bonus Q&A.

I loved the book for many reasons, but one of them was the depiction of Greek-Australians, because I was born in the UK to Greek-Cypriot parents, and have always been frustrated at our lack of presence in modern British literature and cultural life (apart from Stavros the kebab-shop owner and My Big Fat Greek Wedding). I really understood Hector and his family's sense of wanting to do better than the natives, of bewilderment at their low standards, because this is something I grew up hearing from my parents and aunts and uncles.

What effect has your ethnic background had on your writing, and in particular on The Slap?

@poppygolucky

Christos, thank you for your candid and interesting reponses to previous questions - I agree that a new middle class is emerging here in England too, a class that is very hard to classify: unlike previous generations, it is no longer about simply wealth and occupation. So can I press you further to ask what you define as the new middle class, and how do your characters fit in to this? Gary, for example, has middle class 'lefty' ideals but without the financial position? Harry, vice versa etc.

Also, having recently seen the film 'Animal Kingdom', a different side to Melbourne has been shown once the surface has been scratched, a darker side of the city to the cosmpoliatn, European image that many of us in the UK had. What is your take on this?

Thanks again!

Now that is the kind of question that makes me wish we were across a table in a cafe with coffee in our hands. I think one of the defining aspects of this new class, in Australia at least but also I suspect in Europe, is that it no longer looks and sounds like the old "middle class",it now longer need speak the "Queen's English", it no longer means being "professional". Another aspect of class these days is that there doesn't seem to be a sense of community and connection that I think was part of working class life when I was younger. Maybe I am romanticising it, I think that one has to always be conscious of nostalgia, but I do think that a sense of egalitarianism, at least here in Oz, has been increasingly replaced with a competitive and toxic materialism. I'll give you an example: I never used the term "loser" as a child and I tick off my nieces and nephews when they use it. They look at me as if I am crazy. That's what I wanted to get at in The SLap, this new ruthless way of understanding ourselves.

All nations tell myths about themselves. The cosmopolitan European image of Melbourne ends once you move away from the inner-city tram lines. I don't think this is dissimilar to European cities. As a tourist you tend to obnly see and move within the "postcard". That is why reading, listening, taking chances is so important.

@constantlywrong

I am going to be REALLY boring and VERY predictable...but out of curiosity, what is your actual stance on extended breastfeeding? I actually have only just bought the book, and am about 2/3rds of the way through, and half of the time I feel you're ridiculing it, and the other half that you're actually showing how ridiculous people's attitudes to it can be. Sorry, wouldn't feel right asking any "real" questions having not finished it yet.

Sorry - I feel like such a slow typer! I don't really have a position as such on breastfeeding. I will say that one of the loveliest men I know, he is now in his mid-twenties, was breast fed till he was nearly five. His mother is one of the most wonderful human beings I know.

I think as a writer I was interested in the visceral reaction people have to breastfeeding and more than that I was interested in how critical mothers and parents could be about other mothers. I found this equally fascinating and dismaying, how harsh people could be when they themselves understood the difficulty of birth and raising children. I'm sure you have discussed it on this group but that was the paramount question in my mind.

Hello Christos.

I finished your novel last night and, whilst it did not give me a warm fuzzy glow inside, and made me somewhat uncomfortable, I very much enjoyed it.

I haven't read back fully over the Talk history but I see there is some discussion about how 'The Slap' is about society and how a new middle class is emerging. Interesting, as for me the book is very much about about parenting - it is as a result of 'failed parenting' that the slap results, after all.

I appreciate the novel is a work of fiction, but it really doesn't fit in with any version of reality I know of. Are you a parent out of interest? Despite taking drugs in my own youth, I find the attitude of some of the adults in the book (?Aunt Tasha, Richie's mum?) towards drug taking implausible, and I can't imagine writing this myself now that I am a parent.

@TillyBookClub

Reading the posts earlier on, I was intrigued by BodyofEyeore's comment saying 'do you think people would react differently to the book if it were set in England'.

Do you think there is a specifically Australian angle to your novel, and the issues it explores? Do you think it might have been a very different novel were it set in the UK?

And do you, like BodyofEyeore asks, believe that British people might have different reactions were it set in their own country?

It is always difficult to speculate on a place that is not one's own. I am not English or Scottish or Welsh, I have only known these countries as a traveller (though I had three wonderful months in Scotland last year and will always feel an intimacy - can I call it that - with the country). A critic here in Oz said about The Slap that it is one of the first Australian books to assume Melbourne and Australia is the centre of the world. Maybe part of the British reponse to the novel has to do with the dislocation of looking through a strange refracting mirror. Sometimes what you see reflects your reality back at you and then sometimes it is a completely different reality.

I think political correctness is different in Australia, different in the UK, different in the US again. I wonder if the "vulgarity" in The Slap is about a discomfort with it not being polite, saying too much? I do think there is often a separation between what we say and what we think. I am surprised that this seems to be a contested notion. I don't know if this is a cultural difference. It's a good question.

As a teacher, I see this every day - the terms 'freak' and 'loser' applied to children who don't have the latest iphone etc - an aggressive consumerism that is normalised by kids and parents alike. Certainly I felt this with Harry's character, who seemed to genuinely revel in his material superiority, without ever considering culture or community.

One final question - there is undoubtedly a perceived liberal stance on illegal drugs in the novel. I think in the UK a debate about the issue of decriminalisation etc is still very far away. However, it appears whether you view it as morally justifiable or simply wrong, recreational drug taking is a permanent fixture in society. What's your opinion on this?

Really enjoying your feedback.

I love the story about your dad's accidental encouragement of breadth in your reading. Access to the completely random selection of books that my rather indifferent parents had made a similar eclecticism in my reading -- including Portnoy's Complaint at 14 years. Do you think that publishers' decision to put age recommendations on children's books is a bad thing, in light of the value of non-selective, voracious, sometimes 'improper' reading?

I liked Anouk's deliberate, contemptuous inclusion of an 'unacceptable' storyline in her script for the soap she wrote for -- a storyline that muddied the moral water by messing with our society's increasingly rather sanctimonious and simplifying need for tales of victims and perpetrators. Was there any similar contempt in your composition of a similarly muddying tale?

@mummylouise

Hi Christos,

i really loved ur book - i had heard so much about it and didn't think i was going to, but was suprised to stay up late reading it!! My question is that Hector seemed to start out a strong character with definate opinions and thoughts on his life, but by end he seemed faded and withdrawn, i wonder if u had thought about another chapter on Hector and Aisha to focus on the effects of their affairs on their marriage?

Thank you

Thank you for the comments. We are such neurotic self-doubters, we writers, it is very much appreciated.

I said yesterday on one of the posts that when you finish a novel you can only look back on the failures, mistakes. Hector is a man who goes through a breakdown in the novel, a classic middle-age crisis, one in which he has to deal with his failures and deceits as a man. At the end of it I think he is aware that he doesn't have much moral courage. I don't think he is alone in that - the question is how do you live in the world with this knowledge of yourself. At my most pessimistic I think that people live quite well once they have come to an acceptance of this.
I wouldn't have written another chapter but I wonder what the novel would have been like if I began on Aisha and Hector was chapter seven instead? Would the reader have a different sense of him, of Aisha? I knew many couples who had gone through a male partner going through a breakdown and had spoken to women friends who were honest about how they felt angry at their partner's behaviour and feeling. I wanted to write about this, it felt taboo.

Hello Christos
Personally, I'm not sure about the accusations of misogyny but I do think they aren't to do with the misogynistic characters in the book (do you think certain characters are misogynistic?) but rather to do with the depiction of the female characters - Rosie in particular. She comes across as more of a caricature than the other characters to me, with less effort to understand her reaction to the slap and the tone when describing her is more of ridicule.
My question is do you like her less than the other characters, or feel you understand her less? She's definitely the character I least liked and understood, which is odd because on paper she's probably the one I resemble the most. Or maybe that's more about my own prejudices - and maybe that's the point (sorry if that doesn't make much sense)?

@TillyBookClub

I LOVE that your dad bought you Mills and Boon along with Dickens. I am going to try that with my three boys.

What was your parents reaction to the book?

They have just read it, it was published in Greece last month and I gave them a copy three weeks ago. I gave it to my mum on a Friday and I hadn't heard back by Wednesday. I was so unsettled, I thought she must hate it - you have to realise that her world is so different from mine. But on Wednesday night she rang and she was in the middle of the Manolis chapter and loving it. I was so ecstatic, both at the opportunity for her to read my words and also that she looked beyond the language, that she trusted the story. "Yeah, they're all selfish bastards", she said, "But that's the modern world."
I'm waiting for Dad to read it next.

Christos,

A follow up comment i found ur writing style to ould be easy to read and would def read future books!!

@ttalloo

Yeia sou, Christos - I posted this yesterday, but I think it may have got lost in the batch of questions that you got through during the bonus Q&A.

I loved the book for many reasons, but one of them was the depiction of Greek-Australians, because I was born in the UK to Greek-Cypriot parents, and have always been frustrated at our lack of presence in modern British literature and cultural life (apart from Stavros the kebab-shop owner and My Big Fat Greek Wedding). I really understood Hector and his family's sense of wanting to do better than the natives, of bewilderment at their low standards, because this is something I grew up hearing from my parents and aunts and uncles.

What effect has your ethnic background had on your writing, and in particular on The Slap?

Yeia sou.

I think being a child of migrants had a huge affect on how I am, how I came to writing. I have said that I found a tension in being a migrant's child between a sense of obligation and duty and also a concurrent sense of rebellion, of needing to break traditional roles. I feel such an obligation to my family, to the struggles that both my mother and father undertook in coming to a new country, working hard as labourers all their lives, educating myself and my brother, giving us opportunities that were never available to them. At the same time in order to live my life as a writer, as a homosexual man in a relationshiip with the man I love I had to break with family. It was hard, difficult, but I'm glad that on both sides we never stopped communicating with each other. I think it took courage on all sides and I respect my parents for that.
I think one of the problems with Hector is that he doesn't have this courage. I don't know what it is like in the UK but in Australia you find alot of second-generation people who take their parents' struggles for granted, and never challenge their parents, lead a second life, if you like.
This sense of obligation/rebellion iks not uncommon I think to many writers from a background similar to mine. It makes me acutely aware of language, that we don't all necessarily speak the same English, it makes me acutely aware of the central importance of education.

@poppygolucky

As a teacher, I see this every day - the terms 'freak' and 'loser' applied to children who don't have the latest iphone etc - an aggressive consumerism that is normalised by kids and parents alike. Certainly I felt this with Harry's character, who seemed to genuinely revel in his material superiority, without ever considering culture or community.

One final question - there is undoubtedly a perceived liberal stance on illegal drugs in the novel. I think in the UK a debate about the issue of decriminalisation etc is still very far away. However, it appears whether you view it as morally justifiable or simply wrong, recreational drug taking is a permanent fixture in society. What's your opinion on this?

Really enjoying your feedback.

Thanks. Is your nickname taken from the Mike Leigh film? I love that man.

When I was in Scotland last year my partner turned to me and said, You know you are middle-aged when the PM and Deputy Leader of the UK are younger than you are!
I mention this because I think there is a level of hypocrisy about drug use and drug trafficking and about drug commerce. I have had my share of problems with drugs, I know the consequences of drug use. I am also grateful for some of the experiences I have had on drugs, and feel like I would be a hypocrite to deny this. I am very conscious now as an uncle about how to approach the question of drugs, how to communicate information when young people ask me about them. I think one can only be honest, kids can sniff out a bullshitter - you know this as a teacher. Health is the most important issue for me, making sure they have the right information in terms of their health.
A friend of mine has been doing excellent work on the drug wars on the US-Mexico border, a situation of horrific violence and war, absolutely dismaying. He was telling me how the children of the drug lords are been trained in Business Studies at Yale and Harvard, at Cambridge.
I think treating it as a criminal issue rather than a health issue is a wrong direction.

Christos, efharisto!

I think that many children born to immigrant families in the UK take for granted the struggle their parents. And it has made us soft (perhaps like the natives that our parents are competing with and despising), in a way that I think our parents' generation is not. You have to be pretty tough/brave/desperate to get on a boat to a place you knew virtually nothing about, and have to work bloody hard for years, sleeping on floors and sharing rooms and saving every penny you got, and only seeing your loved ones after years of letters and no phone calls. I don't think I have it in me - and I don't think that Hector or Harry do.

Out of interest, how fluent is your Greek? Have you read the Greek translation of The Slap?

Christos, are you happy to stay for another 15 minutes or so?

Also just wanted to flag up a few questions from up thread:

SerialComma's questions about reading ages and Anouk's script

ifaistos question about Rosie

monkeymiss question about failed parenting

Apologies if you're already answering and we cross posts...

@SerialComma

I love the story about your dad's accidental encouragement of breadth in your reading. Access to the completely random selection of books that my rather indifferent parents had made a similar eclecticism in my reading -- including Portnoy's Complaint at 14 years. Do you think that publishers' decision to put age recommendations on children's books is a bad thing, in light of the value of non-selective, voracious, sometimes 'improper' reading?

I liked Anouk's deliberate, contemptuous inclusion of an 'unacceptable' storyline in her script for the soap she wrote for -- a storyline that muddied the moral water by messing with our society's increasingly rather sanctimonious and simplifying need for tales of victims and perpetrators. Was there any similar contempt in your composition of a similarly muddying tale?

I read Portnoy's Complaint as a teenager as well! I loved it, it read like it was describing my life, my fears, my shames. I feel fortunate that I had that experience. I still read Roth, he still makes me want to be better.
If there is anything I know from observation of the kids around me it is that you can't generalise about age appropriate. There are kids I feel fine about giving any book to, there are some that I just know are not ready for it. That is one of the hard roles of teaching, I think, having to respond to the needs and capabilities of an individual child, having to also advocate on behalf of a community of children and young people.
But I am digressing, back to writing. You have to be a great reader to even be a moderately good writer, that's what I think. I repeat that I feel fortunate that I had such a world open to me through books at an early age. Did I understand Henry Miller when Dad gave it to me? Of course not, I had to go back as an adult. But it made me curious about language, it made me want to read more difficult works. I didn't understand complexity and ambiguity as a pre-pubescant but it meant that I wasn't afraid and stricken by inaction a few years later when ambiguity and complexity became part of life. Does that make sense? I'm with Anouk there. I want better readers, better viewers, I think the publishers and the TV executives sell us short.

@TillyBookClub

Christos, are you happy to stay for another 15 minutes or so?

Also just wanted to flag up a few questions from up thread:

SerialComma's questions about reading ages and Anouk's script

ifaistos question about Rosie

monkeymiss question about failed parenting

Apologies if you're already answering and we cross posts...

Most definitely. Thank you for this opportunity. I will answer all the above questions.

It is, yes. I too love Mike Leigh - social realism at its finest! I agree with your comments on drugs, and enjoyed how it was explored in a non-judgemental way in the book. Thanks again for all of your responses; I'm looking forward to reading your future novels.

Ttalloo - I'm also the child of immigrant parents and grew up in a real 'melting-pot' area of London. I think that many of the people I grew up with were spurred on by their parents to look onwards and upwards - and for the most part we have. We've taken advantage of education and opportunities that were never available to them, and should always be grateful.

I do worry though about my children and the children of my friends, they're being brought up with so much instant gratification compared to us - it's going to be very hard to instil the kind of work ethic our parents had and have tried to pass on to us. I worry that material things come to easily to children now, and that we have created a throw-away society - and are creating a trap for them further down the line when they will need to support that lifestyle themselves.

hi Christos, are you there?
if so just wanted to say I really enjoyed the book, thank you.