Recommendations
Books Like The Slap
Eight perspectives on one Melbourne barbecue and what it reveals about Australia
If The Slap caught you — the eight voices, the multicultural Melbourne suburb, the way a single incident exposes every fault line — these eight novels share its multiple-perspective structure, its unflinching portrait of Australian suburban life, or its use of a social incident to examine what a society actually believes.
- 1Buy
Cloudstreet
by Tim Winton
Two families sharing a Perth house across twenty years — Winton's Miles Franklin Award winner is the most celebrated companion to The Slap in Australian literary fiction: both novels take working-class and middle-class Australian family life with complete literary seriousness, both use ensemble casts, and both insist that ordinary Australian lives are as rich and complicated as any in the world; where The Slap is set in contemporary Melbourne, Cloudstreet is set in postwar Perth
- 2Buy
Barracuda
by Christos Tsiolkas
Daniel Kelly, an Australian swimmer predicted to win gold at the Olympics who didn't, and the consequences of that failure — Tsiolkas's follow-up to The Slap is the obvious companion: the same portrait of Australian working-class and immigrant life, the same unflinching treatment of difficult subjects, and the same interest in how Australian men construct and destroy themselves; where The Slap is organized around a public incident, Barracuda is organized around a private failure
- 3Buy
The Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Stevens the butler's recognition of what his loyalty cost him — Ishiguro's novel is the English counterpart to The Slap's Australian one in its use of a single perspective to expose the costs of a value system; where The Slap multiplies perspectives to show how a single incident looks different from eight positions, Remains of the Day uses a single perspective to show how an entire life looks when the value system that organized it is honestly examined
- 4Buy
The Corrections
by Jonathan Franzen
The Lambert family navigating their last Christmas together — Franzen's National Book Award winner is the American companion to The Slap's Australian one in its portrait of a dysfunctional middle-class family examined through multiple perspectives; both novels are organized around a family gathering, both use ensemble cast to show how the same situation looks different from different positions, and both are fundamentally about the gap between family members' self-images and what they actually do to each other
- 5Buy
The Virgin Suicides
by Jeffrey Eugenides
Five teenage sisters who commit suicide narrated by the boys who observed them — Eugenides's debut shares The Slap's structure of a community narrating an incident it cannot fully understand; where The Slap gives eight first-person perspectives, The Virgin Suicides gives one collective perspective that accumulates evidence from many sources; both novels are fundamentally about the limits of what can be known about another person's or family's inner life
- 6Buy
The God of Small Things
by Arundhati Roy
Twins in Kerala and the transgression that destroyed their family — Roy's Booker Prize winner shares The Slap's interest in the hidden dynamics that an ordinary family gathering reveals, and its portrait of a class and caste hierarchy that governs social behavior without being explicitly acknowledged; where The Slap's social world is contemporary multicultural Australia, Roy's is postcolonial Kerala
- 7Buy
A Fine Balance
by Rohinton Mistry
Four characters in an Indian city during Indira Gandhi's Emergency, brought together by circumstance — Mistry's novel shares The Slap's ensemble structure and its portrait of how political and social forces shape the lives of ordinary people who are simply trying to live; while The Slap's world is relatively prosperous Australian suburban life, Mistry's is the economic emergency of 1970s India, making the contrast between what 'ordinary life' means in different contexts legible
- 8Buy
Jasper Jones
by Craig Silvey
Charlie Bucktin in a small Western Australian town in 1969, drawn by Jasper Jones into the discovery of a murdered girl — Silvey's novel shares The Slap's portrait of Australian suburban life and the violence that lies beneath its surface, its interest in the gap between official Australian tolerance and actual Australian prejudice, and its ensemble cast of characters each of whom relates differently to the central incident
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