Written with a bawdy gusto, The Slapping Man is a unique and darkly funny story which manages to continually entertain and shock. In the tradition of the best-selling The Breadmaker's Carnival.
The Slapping Man a bawdy, hilarious, poignant tale of a world turned inside out.
Welcome to Salvation, a ribald town where nothing is sacred - except perhaps the beer, the sex and the fishing. A town so haunted by its past it can only function in the present. No wonder the locals call this place Ruination.
The people are ready for a saviour and when Ernie, The Slapping Man, enters their lives he beguiles them with a most unusual patter:
Don't be sad, no need to frown, The Slapping Man has come to town. Feel your life's a horrid trap? Just step up and take a slap!'
The odd thing is that it seems to work a single slap and they glow with joy. Is it true? Does Ernie's jaw really have magical properties?
Suddenly the people of Salvation are caught up in a strange mania: the pure addiction to the pleasure of letting fly at The Slapping Man. Rejuvenation is theirs as Ernie becomes Salvation's salvation.
There's just one problem - Slapping Men don't last forever . . .
The Slapping Man another creation of intoxicating wildness and excitement. A big, slapping shout of a book from a writer who creates and celebrates his own world of the marvellous, the mythical, and the grotesque.' Peter Bishop, Varuna Writers Centre iew - Katharine England
