Chapter 20

In the last chapter, Sam has a last dream or vision. He wakes next to a beautiful girl, and he has no idea of what is going on. He just plays along, and finds out that they are going to meet Alicia at a restaurant. Alicia stands is waiting for them with a good looking man, and she is looking better and healthier than Sam has seen her for a long time. He finds out that the beautiful girl is Alex, his girlfriend, and that the man, Carl, is Alicia’s new boyfriend. Sam and Alicia have moved on with their lives, Sam continued his studies and got a job, and Alicia has started studying. They both spend a lot of time with Roof, and currently he is living with Sam while Alicia studies. Sam and Alicia have moved on, and Sam thinks that it seems like everything is going to be all right :)

Chapter 19

Time has passed, and Sam is now eighteen years old. He still lives at home with his mother, and she has given birth to a little girl, Emily. Sam is looking back at the time that has passed, and answers some questions, the biggest one being how the relationship is with Alicia. Sam and Alicia had been living apart, but they stayed together for Roof. One day, when they had been in the park with Roof and there had been none fighting between them, they ended up having sex for the first time since Roof’s birth. Alicia’s mother walked into them after they had sex, and she reacted quite badly.  She screams at them and makes them get dressed and come down. Then it is revealed that the relationship between Alicia’s parents is not as good as it seemed. Alicia’s mother wants Alicia to be with someone she really loves, and will love for the rest of her life, and not make the same mistake as her. Sam understands because he is not sure if he loves Alicia the way he used to before roof, but he still wants to give it a try. After the discussion, Sam goes home, and Alicia’s parents are still screaming at each other in the kitchen.

Chapter 18

Sam is staying with his mother because of his cold, and he is reading about teenagers with babies on the internet. Then he comes across some statistics about how eighty percent of fathers in England lose connections with their children after fifteen years. Sam gets frighten and does not want it to happen to him, so he goes over to Alicia to talk about it. When he tries to explain it all comes out wrong, and they get into a fight. Ironical, Alicia threatens Sam with that he never will see Roof again, the same thing Sam was afraid would happen. Thanks to Alicia’s mother, they sit down and talk, and the misunderstanding gets cleared up.   

Chapter 17

Sam father had not seen Roof jet, but a couple of days after Sam and Alicia fought, he asks Sam to go to a restaurant with him and that he should bring Roof. Sam’s father tells Sam a bit about how it was when Sam was born, and how Sam’s relationship with Alicia probably would end out with a break up. This gets Sam thinking, and in the days after, him and Alicia fights a lot. Sam catches a cold and he does not want to infect Roof. For that reason, and also to spend some time apart, he moves back to his mother. Then he lives the moment he dreamed of, or had some sort of vision the second time (chapter 12). This time he handles it a lot better, and he knows that he is just staying at his mother’s place, because he has a cold.

Chapter 16

Sam is waking up in Alicia’s bedroom, and he quickly realize that he is living the moment that he first dreamed of, or had some sort of vision of in earlier (chapter 6). The only different is the fact that this time, he knows what is going on. He goes through a normal day of his new life, except he has a big conflict with Alicia, but in the end when Alicia asks if Sam loves her, he says he does. Roof is now three weeks old, and he is keeping Sam and Alicia up almost the entire night, but when Sam looks at him in the morning, he is extremely happy that he is Roof’s father.

Chapter 15

When they get home from the hospital, Sam moves in with Alicia and Roof in Alicia’s bedroom. Both Alicia’s mother and Sam’s mother do not like it, but they cannot change their opinion. Sam is feeling homesick just after a couple of hours, but he thinks he can live with it for a while.

Chapter 14

When Sam is skating, his mother comes running down the street to tell him that Alicia has gone into labour. Sam runs to Alicia’s house and they go to the hospital. Alicia’s mother is coming along, and that is good, otherwise Sam would have left because Alicia was so angry and mean to everybody. The birth went well, and Alicia’s temper becomes a lot better after the birth.

Everybody is happy it went so well, and the little boy gets the name Rufus because the artist who was playing in the background was Rufus Wainwrigth. When the question of what the surname is going to be, there becomes an angry discussion between Alicia’s mother, Burns, and Sam’s mother, Jones. They get really mad with each other, but Alicia decides that the new born boy’s full name will be Rufus Jones.

Chapter 13

Some time has passed, and we get to know that the dreams or visions Sam has been having are the real future. We now know the story and how it will end, sort of, but we do not know the details. Sam’s mother finally tells Sam that she is pregnant, and Sam and Alicia have their final exams. Sam did ok, Alicia did horrible. It is now time for them to think about their future. Sam decides he wants to go to college, and Alicia decides to take a year off, and continue studying when the baby gets older.

Chapter 12

Sam had another weird dream, or some sort of look into the future or a possible future. This vision or dream is further into the future and his son is two years old and his little sister is born. Sam is not as confused as last time, but he still does not know what is going on. He does not live with Alicia anymore, but he is still in College. Alicia is feeling sick, so she asks Sam to take Roof, which he finds out is short for Rufus, to the hospital. This is the first time Sam gets to spend some time with his son, and he really enjoys it. When he gets home he relaxes and goes to sleep, and when he wakes up, he is back in the past.

Chapter 11

 
Alicia’s parents have given up trying to convince Alicia to take an abortion, and instead they are trying to make an effort on Sam. They understand that Sam and Alicia want to be together, and they try to make Sam feel like a part of the family. It does not go extremely well, but at least they are making an effort.

Around the dinner table, Alicia’s parents ask where Sam is going to live when the baby is born. Sam and Alicia had already decided that Sam was going to live with her, but Alicia’s parents talk them into trying to live together before the baby is born. When Sam comes home later that day, Alicia’s mother has already talked to his mother and she tries to talk him out of it. Sam has decided, and she cannot change his decision.

Chapter 10

A lot of things happen the weeks after telling Sam and Alicia told their parents. Sam’s mother told his father, and he seems quite happy about it. Everybody at their schools has heard about it, and so have the teachers. The teachers were quite exited, because that gave them the chance to test out the school strategy for teen pregnancy. Sam and Alicia go to a class where they are supposed to learn about having a child. They went once and decided that it was not for them, all the other future parents were too old for their comfort. Because of all the drama, and all the mixed feelings, Sam and Alicia get back together, and they start spending much time with each other again. Sam’s mother’s new boyfriend Mark is also moving in with them, but Sam have mixed feelings about his mother’s new relationship.

Chapter 9

Sam has avoided Alicia for a while, but a few days after Sam returned Alicia comes knocking on the door. She tells him that she is pregnant, and that she wants to keep it. Alicia wants Sam to join her telling her parents, but Sam cannot that day, because he is going to family counsel with his mother and father that evening.

Alicia waits for Sam after school, and they go home to Alicia too tell her parents. Alicia’s mother and father do not take it well and they get extremely angry, especially at Sam. They demand to come along to tell Sam’s mother.

When they get to Sam’s apartment, his mother has invited Mark over because Sam said he would be out the entire day, but Mark has to leave when Sam and Alicia tell what is going on. Sam’s mother is really upset, but she is not as mad as Alicia’s parents. Sam does not know how to tell his father, so his mother offers to tell him.

Chapter 8

After working for Mr Brady for a day, Sam realises how stupid he has been and he goes home. When he comes home to his flat, his mother is standing in the living room with some police men, and Sam has to tell why he ran away. Sam does not want to tell that Alicia might be pregnant, so he uses the fact that his parents are divorced as an excuse. His mother forgives him, but she says that they are going to start going to a family counsellor.

Sam does not know whether to talk to Alicia or not, but he decides to hide outside her house for a while. He goes home because he did not see any signs of Alicia, and he did not want to knock on the door. Sam do not know what to do, he wants to know whether Alicia is pregnant or not, but he does not want to know it right now.      

Chapter 7

After waking up from the dream/vision, Sam decides to run away from it all, from Alicia, from the baby, and from his mother. He backed his bag and took the train to a town called Hasting, where he had been on vacation with his mother. He brought along only forty quid, so he was desperate to get a job. None of the shops or businesses had any jobs available, but then he randomly bumps into a grumpy old man who is willing to pay him twenty quid per day for helping him up and down the stairs at a bed and breakfast. Sam also rented a room in the same bed and breakfast as Mr Brady lives in; Mr Brady is the grumpy old man. So now Sam have a job and a place to sleep up in Hasting.

Chapter 6

Sam has a weird dream, or some sort of look into the future or a possible future. In his dream or vision thing, he is one year into the future. Alicia has given birth to a little boy and they have named him Roof. Sam has moved into Alicia’s house and they sleep together with their soon Roof in Alicia’s room. Everybody else is acting normal, but Sam has no idea of what is going on. He can not remember anything from last year, and there are many people that know Sam that he does not know. According to everybody else, Sam is studying at a College, but he does not know anything about it but plays along and pretends to go to the College when he actually goes out for a walk. The biggest surprise for Sam is the fact that his mother is pregnant, but he just pretends everything is normal.

After a long day, he wakes up in his own bed, not the bed at Alicia’s, but at his old home in the past

Chapter 5

The fact that Sam had broken up with Alicia had done him no end of good at school, especially with the girls. Someone from his school had seen him with the extremely beautiful Alicia, and now when they had broken up, he became extremely popular with the girls. He goes on a date with a girl who wouldn’t even look at him before, but he feels like it is not the same as with Alicia.

 Sam is also turning sixteen, and he is celebrating his birthday with his divorced mother and father, and they are not getting along with each other. In the middle of the celebration, Sam gets a text from Alicia, and she wants to se him quickly. The meet up in a coffee shop, and Alicia tells Sam that her period is three weeks late. They head over to a pharmacy to buy a pregnancy test, but they do not have enough money. When Alicia goes home to get some more money, Sam just turn off his phone and walks home.

Chapter 4

Sam’s and Alicia’s relationship has reached the end of it amazing start. It is not that things start to go wrong, but it is not as good as before. They just sit in Alicia’s room and watch TV and have sex, they don’t talk to each other anymore. Sam’s mother notices that something is wrong in the relationship, but Sam does not want to tell her. The relationship does not get any better, and they end up breaking up.

Chapter 3

Sam and Alicia have become boyfriend and girlfriend. They spend all their spare time on each other, and it is like torture to Sam when he is not with Alicia. The schooldays feel like they are lasting forever, and when they are together the time flies by. Sam’s mother thinks Sam and Alicia spend too much time together, and she makes Sam come spend an evening with her on a pizzeria and not with Alicia. At the pizzeria, Sam’s mother meets a colleague, a guy named Mark, and they really hit it off.

Sam spends the next days being with Alicia. A few days after the evening apart from each other, Alicia talks Sam into not wearing a condom when they are having sex. Sam does not wear a condom, but when he comes he tries to put the condom back on. He makes it, but he feel that something is wrong, that he might have been too late.

Chapter 2

As the story progress, we get to know more about Sam and the other persons in the novel. One of things we get to know is that Sam’s mother had Sam when she was 16 years old, and had to give up school at the moment, but she continued studying when Sam got older. We also get to know one of Sam’s “friends”, or rather skating buddy, Rabbit. He is very good at skating, but not that good in school or at anything else.

The main event in chapter 2 is the story of how Sam meets Alicia. Sam’s mother was invited to Alicia’s mother’s 50 years birthday and she makes Sam come along. At the party Sam and Alicia meets for the first time, but they do not get off with a good start. After a while they start talking and getting to know each other. They find out that they actually have a lot in common, and Alicia invites Sam to the cinema the next day.

They meet the next day at the pizzeria close to the cinema, but they had so much to talk about so they missed the movie. Instead they go back to Alicia’s house, and they end up having sex.

Chapter 1

I have now read the first chapter of the novel "Slam" by the bestselling author Nick Hornby, and I have gotten a picture of what the book is about. Chapter one is a short intro told by the main character Sam about the story he is going to tell later in the book from when he was fifteen. Sam refers to the time when he was fifteen, almost sixteen, as the time when his life was ticking along quite nice. He had learned two new skateboard tricks, his mother had left her horrible boyfriend, and he met Alicia. We don’t get to know Alicia yet, but we do get to know that she means a lot to Sam. We also get to know that skateboarding is a very big part of Sam’s life, and that his biggest hero in the world is the world famous skater Tony Hawk. Sam has a poster of Tony Hawk in his room which he talks to about his life, but mostly skating. He have read Tony Hawk’s book “Hawk-Occupation: Skateboarder” forty to fifty times, so the poster answers with quotes form that book.

Chapter one is not about more than that, it was a short chapter but filled with a lot of hints for the rest of the novel. I can understand that skateboarding is a big part of the book, but it also seems like a love story between Sam and Alicia.

I realy enjoyed the first chapter, and it seems like a book I will enjoy reading. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the book.