Slam - Hornby

I stumbled out of my local used book store with Nick Hornby's latest, "Slam" not knowing at all what to expect but excited for a first introduction to Hornby's writing.  Not knowing this book is perhaps more correctly classified as Young Adult I began to read.  It is about fifteen year old boy named Sam coming of age through one of life's greatest oops situations.  I was instantly intrigued -- perhaps because I was once an adolescent boy and Hornby's story telling connected immediately, or perhaps the god like presence of TH (or Tony Hawk or Thiery Henry for that matter, whatever) still appealed to what's left of the kid in me.  I liked it, I liked it a lot.  Perhaps not five stars but a strong four.  Perhaps not the greatest story ever told, but a very real and common story, with very real and very compelling characters.  We know or have known them all and Hornby brings them to life and us into their lives just as sure as we were at the kitchen table learning Sam's life altering news in real time.  We learn, or don't learn from the same mistakes, young and not so young.  Hornby uses a dream technique to flash forward and back in time so we can observe what Sam is observing as he reflects on his own actions before he acts and how he may act in the future.  While he does not use the technique to create twists and turns in his story, Hornby introduces true anxiety and perhaps a little fear in the reader, as we struggle with Sam to cope in very new and very real, true life situations.  Through this story we can reflect on our past and the futures of those we wish to shelter as they too, eventually must learn to fly on their own and hopefully not make too many big mistakes along the way.  This was a fun ride and although I do not have a teenage boy, I do have a daughter who in a few years will be exposed to the angst of the adolescence boy.  I do have teenage nephews to whom I'll will send this book.  If they sit still long enough to move past the first few pages, I suspect they will learn more than a few valuable lessons from Hornby.