Nick Hornby continues to be my favourite author and Slam further solidifies this. He writes about me, without writing about me. He writes about characters who have one foot forward into growing up, but with their other foot firmly rooted into their childhood. Like in High Fidelity or About a Boy, they’re stories of men who don’t want to grow up. So Slam follows this trend of characters, except it turns things on its head a bit. Instead of a story about grownups, this is a story about a teenager; someone who is half-way between childhood and adulthood. With the analogy of one foot forward and one foot back, the teen would probably be mid-way... that’s right, in the crotch region of life. The story is about a 16-year old boy named Sam who is raised by his single mother who conceived him when she was a teenager. Sam is a typical teenager, the one that’s sort of breezing through life, without any clear direction or motivation to take his life anywhere. He’s a big fan of skating (as in skat...