Wide reading log 4

Wide reading log 4

Slide the corner

Fleur Beale

Novels

1/7/2020

Greg is a 17 year old boy that lives in wellington and is a lot different to his sisters and brother which his parents don’t understand. Greg is not smart at all and his siblings are extremely smart. Greg doesn’t have the same interests as them either. William, his little brother loves stargazing and his sisters love trumpet, but Greg loves rally cars. Greg’s dad is very against cars in general thinking they are destroying the world and are a waste of money. Greg’s mum has the same state of mind but is more angry about Greg’s effort in school. Greg didn’t pass level 1 so his mum is making him do it again. Greg doesn’t have many friends at school either because none of them are like him. Greg’s dad is getting even more angry at him for not having a job. So one day after school greg was biking around going to every petrol station and asking if they have any jobs available but all of them said no, but suddenly when he was biking home there was a car with a flat tire and a pregnant women and greg went and asked if he can help and she says yes. The pregnant lady ended up to be a co-driver for a rally car and Greg was in disbelief. The lady then asks if Greg wants to come over after school the next day to have a look at the car, which he does and meets Brad the ladies wife. They ended up having a car fixing business and Brad drives rally cars. Greg went around to their place for the next few days helping Brad fix some cars and then Brad asked if he wanted to work there, Greg said yes. When Greg’s parents found out they were not happy, but let him do it because it was a job. He still didn’t like school so he changed subjects. Once Greg changed subjects he started to not dread school as much, this shown in the quote “For the first time in my life, I enjoyed a day at school.” Brad then asked him if he wanted to be his co-driver in the upcoming rally car competition and Greg said yes within a blink of an eye. Greg learned and studied all the things he needed to know for co-driving. It was race day and Greg was very nervous but by the end of the day very happy because they had come 2nd. Things started to go well for Greg, both of his parents starting to accept that he is different to his siblings getting shown with the quote “All right, Greg. You can go your own way. I have to admit I think we’ve been wrong.”. He ends up passing the year at school and getting some friends because of how involved he was with the rally car races. Greg also buys himself a little red rally car with the money he got from his work and enters in a race. He comes 1st out of the three other competitors in his division. Greg finally finds his happy place in life and doesn’t want anything to change.

I found Brad interesting because he took Greg under his wing teaching him lots and giving him lots of helpful advice. If I was Greg I would be very grateful because without those opportunities Greg would be still sad and in the wrong place of mind. I think lots of older people should be like Brad and give advice to younger people so they can go further with the things that they are interested in. Another thing I found interesting about Brad was that he was very old school shown with the quote “Go Bake a cake. Do something womanly.” I found this interesting because the stereotype of mechanics being very old school is a big thing and this doesn’t go against it which I thought the author would have because he has made other characters go against the trend previously in the story, such as that Greg wants to do rally car racing which is against the trend because not very many teenagers want to be rally car drivers.

A big message I took from this novel is that you need to go your own way and not copy or get told what you want to do. You should make your own path and because that will make you much happier rather than if you do the same as someone else’s path. I can relate to this a little bit because the main sports around here are rugby or netball but I decided to play basketball and liked it much more than rugby because when i was playing rugby it wasn’t like I was having fun, it was like I was doing it because others were. When I got real into basketball it felt like I wasn’t going against the trend because lots of others had started to play as well making me not feel like I was going against the trend.

A huge challenge for Greg was school. Greg didn’t have very many friends and was not very smart either. Greg had failed level 1 NCEA and his mum was making him do it again. Greg’s mum was so unhappy shown with the quote ”you used to be such a good boy – never gave us any worry”  so she would be at home after school and study with Greg for the whole afternoon which Greg dreaded. To overcome the struggles he changed subjects to mechanical engineering but you needed to pay for it and there was no way his parents were paying for it so he went looking for a job and got the job with Brad. Greg started to like school more and he went to work every day after school. Changing the subjects ended up working because he passed the year to his mother’s disbelief.

Slide the corner is a very good title because it relates back to everything. Such as the rally car driving and also Gregs life because he had to get around a big corner to be in a place where he is now. 

I would recommend it to someone Greg’s age who has their parents trying to live their life through them so that they can avoid that and make their own path or set their own trend.