In the first chapter of The Slap, a group of family and friends is having a backyard barbecue. One of the children has a tantrum, and a man not his father slaps him. Descriptions of the book suggest that it "shows how a single action can change the way people think about how they live, what they want, and what they believe forever." But that's not really true. The slap merely serves as the pretext for examining a cross-section of Australian society. We meet a range of characters - young and old, native and immigrant, rich and poor - and learn how they react to the slap, but none of them change what they believe forever.
I understand why Tsiolkas chose to tell his story by rotating through eight narrators, but I think the book would have been better if he'd focused on the central character of Rosie, or maybe Rosie and one other character for perspective. Rosie was the richest character, and her story touched on all of the themes Tsiolkas addresses.
Tsiolkas limns the subtlety of certain emotions very well, but anger is not one of them. Whenever one of the characters gets upset, he or she becomes indistinguishable from the other characters.
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