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The Slap
The slap in the title of Roger McDonald's fifth novel is a life-giving blow delivered to a baby boy at the font of an Australian country church, over fifty years ago.
Tanner Hatton Finch is granted life that day. But there seems perilously little promise in it. He grows up wild in isolated, windswept countryside, the child of misplaced artistic parents. Obsessed with fire and explosives, he lies, cheats and steals his way through a childhood set on a course of opposition and destruction.
Only one person, Ruby, doesn't turn away from him. The story of their friendship - unlovable withered frog, it was only ever Ruby who could reach him with her great little heart - forms the centrepiece of the novel until the dramatic appearance of Kel, a boy with a talent for loyalty and a love of knives, and Tanner's life changes absolutely.
Told over the span of a lifetime, The Slap reveals the redemptive power of friendship and love in a story that delivers its surprises to the very end. It is an original, disturbing novel that confirms Roger McDonald as one of Australia's foremost chroniclers of rural life and the complexities of the human heart.
Tanner Hatton Finch is granted life that day. But there seems perilously little promise in it. He grows up wild in isolated, windswept countryside, the child of misplaced artistic parents. Obsessed with fire and explosives, he lies, cheats and steals his way through a childhood set on a course of opposition and destruction.
Only one person, Ruby, doesn't turn away from him. The story of their friendship - unlovable withered frog, it was only ever Ruby who could reach him with her great little heart - forms the centrepiece of the novel until the dramatic appearance of Kel, a boy with a talent for loyalty and a love of knives, and Tanner's life changes absolutely.
Told over the span of a lifetime, The Slap reveals the redemptive power of friendship and love in a story that delivers its surprises to the very end. It is an original, disturbing novel that confirms Roger McDonald as one of Australia's foremost chroniclers of rural life and the complexities of the human heart.
306 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
10 people want to read
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April 22, 2015
Fire. Even when we live in cities, as most of us do, Australians fear fire. Our legends of fire don’t feature a Promethean gift: the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation tell how Crow stole fire from the Seven Karatgurk Women and in a subsequent melee he was burned to black by the bushfire he started.
Australians know that fire is essential for the regeneration and management of the bush, but our history of cataclysmic bushfires causing shocking loss of life breeds a healthy respect for fire. An uncontrollable bushfire is not something we can ignore, not even in our cities far from conflagrations in the Dandenongs, the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, the Adelaide Hills or on Mt Wellington. Our skies become a dull, angry red; the winds bring the smoke and we taste the ash; we dig deep into our pockets to help out the victims; and we don’t forget about them afterwards. Our bushfires come into our suburbs too, and an urban conflagration like the Great Fire of London seems not just the stuff of dystopian fiction or cli-fi.
Yet every year there are reports that some of these fires are deliberately started. In disbelief we learn that someone fascinated by fire has caused the destruction, and sometimes, loss of life. And then there is a silence: these cases never seem to make it to court, and in our hearts we know that the perpetrator is a child, or an adult with a childlike mind. Someone not able to take responsibility for what they have done; someone the legal system treats with compassion. There is not much that we can do other than be vigilant.
Roger McDonald’s brilliant fifth novel The Slap (1996) is the story of a child fascinated by fire. The slap of the title is the life-giving blow delivered to Tanner Hatton Finch when he stops breathing on his baptismal day, but this gift of life brings damnation. This perverse Faustian bargain doesn’t bring Tanner knowledge, wealth or power, only a diabolical ability to survive.
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2015/04/22/th...
Australians know that fire is essential for the regeneration and management of the bush, but our history of cataclysmic bushfires causing shocking loss of life breeds a healthy respect for fire. An uncontrollable bushfire is not something we can ignore, not even in our cities far from conflagrations in the Dandenongs, the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, the Adelaide Hills or on Mt Wellington. Our skies become a dull, angry red; the winds bring the smoke and we taste the ash; we dig deep into our pockets to help out the victims; and we don’t forget about them afterwards. Our bushfires come into our suburbs too, and an urban conflagration like the Great Fire of London seems not just the stuff of dystopian fiction or cli-fi.
Yet every year there are reports that some of these fires are deliberately started. In disbelief we learn that someone fascinated by fire has caused the destruction, and sometimes, loss of life. And then there is a silence: these cases never seem to make it to court, and in our hearts we know that the perpetrator is a child, or an adult with a childlike mind. Someone not able to take responsibility for what they have done; someone the legal system treats with compassion. There is not much that we can do other than be vigilant.
Roger McDonald’s brilliant fifth novel The Slap (1996) is the story of a child fascinated by fire. The slap of the title is the life-giving blow delivered to Tanner Hatton Finch when he stops breathing on his baptismal day, but this gift of life brings damnation. This perverse Faustian bargain doesn’t bring Tanner knowledge, wealth or power, only a diabolical ability to survive.
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2015/04/22/th...
Displaying 1 of 1 review