The story of their friendship - unlovable withered frog, it was only ever Ruby who could reach him with her great little heart - forms the centrepiece of the novel until the dramatic appearance of Kel, a boy with a talent for loyalty and a love of knives, and Tanner's life changes absolutely. Only one person, Ruby, doesn't turn away from him. Obsessed with fire and explosives, he lies, cheats and steals his way through a childhood set on a course of opposition and destruction. He grows up wild in isolated, windswept countryside, the child of misplaced artistic parents. But there seems perilously little promise in it. Tanner Hatton Finch is granted life that day. When Rosie rebukes Richie, telling him that it’s wrong to hurt people, Richie blurts out that Hector raped Connie.The slap in the title of Roger McDonald's fifth novel is a life-giving blow delivered to a baby boy at the font of an Australian country church, over fifty years ago.

Rosie refuses to believe Richie’s version of events. Richie pulls Hugo by the arm, and Hugo arrives home crying. Richie tells the boy to apologize, but Hugo refuses. As Richie carries Hugo home from the park, Hugo spits at a stranger. When he sees Hector at the swimming pool, Richie is overcome with embarrassment.

While the two of them are babysitting Hugo, they find a photo album containing a picture of the young Hector. The final point-of-view character is Connie’s gay friend, Richie. Aisha is angry, but the couple is reconciled when Hector agrees to move to a different school district. He admits to his affair with a teenager (although he doesn’t name Connie), and Aisha admits to her own infidelity. Meanwhile, Hector is having a mid-life crisis. We switch to Aisha’s point of view as she travels to a conference, where she has sex with a colleague-her first infidelity to Hector. They disapprove of the fact that Aisha has snubbed their nephew Harry in solidarity with her friend Rosie. He and his wife attend a funeral, and discuss the rift between them and their daughter-in-law Aisha. The next point of view is Hector’s father Manolis. When she gets home, Gary is passed out on the lawn. One day, Gary racially insults her friends, who ask her not to contact them again. Rosie finds herself lying to her friends and family as her life begins to fall apart. Gary, frustrated, begins to drink heavily. She is contemplating sabotaging Gary’s condoms in order to have another child because “Hugo needs a brother.” Rosie and Gary have brought a complaint against Harry before a judge, but the complaint is dismissed. Since then, Hugo has been her whole world.

At six months old, she almost contemplated walking out on the screaming baby-but this moment proved a turning point. His was a difficult birth and she struggled to attach to him. Rosie’s point of view fills us in on the backstory of her relationship with Hugo.

The slap book