Winner of the Commonwealth Writer's Prize 2009 At a suburban barbecue one afternoon, a man slaps an unruly boy.The boy is not his son.It is a single act of violence, but the slap reverberates through the lives of everyone who witnesses it happen.Christos Tsiolkas presents the impact of this apparently minor domestic incident through the eyes of eight of those who witness it. The result is an unflinching interrogation of the life of the modern family, a deeply thought-provoking novel about boundaries and their limits