Clichés derail overhyped new novel

{ "b" : "The Slap"}

By Christos Tsiolkas

Tuskar Rock Press, €14

Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap arrives on these shores trailing a Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and a glut of astonishing reviews.

Here, we are assured, is a great novel, a novel for our times, a sensitive and gripping dissection of the way we all live now.

‘‘Ingenious and passionate,” wrote Doug Johnstone in the Independent.

‘‘Tells a layered, briskly paced story about complex ...