Age 14+

Fifteen-year-old skater boy Sam has a careless moment in his first sexual relationship, and Alicia, his posher girlfriend, discovers she is pregnant just as they are losing interest in each other. She decides to keep the baby. Sam, himself the product of a teenage pregnancy, whose mother’s life has been compromised, seeks advice from his hero, the skateboarding champion Tony Hawk – or at least from a poster he talks to in his bedroom. The responses Sam hears or imagines he hears come from “the Hawk’s” bland autobiography, and are sometimes apt, sometimes hopelessly not. Then, by the power of the poster or some other magic, Sam is transported forwards into his future as a teenage father – an ingenious narrative device that is effectively used to highlight the boy’s unreadiness. Hornby’s first young-adult novel is inevitably quite a grown-up read about sex but, truthful and funny, it conveys poignantly the immaturity of a youth burdened with adult responsibilities. Sam and Alicia do their best, but fatherhood makes Sam envy even the life of the biggest loser he knows, a stupid skater known as “Rubbish”. What a warning to teenage boys.

SLAM by Nick Hornby
(Penguin £14.99)

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