Nick Hornby | In the skin of teen boy facing fatherhood

"I felt like I was watching some film I didn't understand."

That's Sam, the teenage narrator of "Slam," British author Nick Hornby's first novel for young adults. He's telling us about the first time he slept with his girlfriend — but the remark fits nearly everything in Sam's world, because Sam is kissing his life as an ordinary, working-class London bloke goodbye.

Sam's a well-meaning, basically sweet kid, with a single mom only 16 years his elder. He loves skateboarding and has a future in design at college. But he's also got a girlfriend with whom he's just broken up, and they've got a problem: She's pregnant.

"Slam" (204 pp., $19.99) is a look — by turns funny and heartbreaking — at how the kids and their parents handle this. It includes moments of panic (an overnight, denial-fueled dash from home), befuddlement (Sam tells his problems to a poster of skateboarder Tony Hawk), even a bit of foreshadowing time-travel.

The book shares some characteristics with Hornby's other novels ("High Fidelity," "About a Boy," "A Long Way Down") and with his nonfiction ("Fever Pitch," "Songbook"). Chief among these are a love of pop culture, especially music, and a healthy respect for clear, unadorned language. At the same time, Sam, forced to grow up fast, is in many ways the opposite of Hornby's typical protagonists, slackers who never quite outgrow childhood.

Is "Slam" a "Catcher in the Rye" for our times, only less snide and with better jokes? Maybe. At the least, it's a poignant story that, while ostensibly for teens, works just fine for grown-ups too. Speaking from London, the affable Hornby recently chatted about it.

Q: "Slam" was a blessing and a curse for me. I'm a fan, but also the father of a 16-year-old girl. My first reaction when I learned "Slam's" topic was: Aiieeee!

A: I trust it gives some hope that you'll survive your daughter's teen years. I think by the time she's 35, you'll be fine.

Q: So why'd you write a young-adult novel?

A: There's no straightforward answer. The idea started, I suppose, when I saw an extremely young couple pushing a buggy in my local park. ... You hear about teen mums, but you don't hear very much from dads. I started thinking about teenage parents, especially a young father. Also, a lot of kids have been coming to my readings — many have read "About a Boy" — so it felt like there was some connection already.

Q: Did you have different parameters for writing for that age group?

A: It didn't feel different, apart from the flash forwards into the future. I'm not sure I would have done that in an adult book.

Q: Have you had any discussions with teenagers about unplanned pregnancy while writing the book, or while on tour?

A: I haven't had any particular conversations ... one that I did have was with a kid in Manchester — she showed me the scars all up her arm, she was a self-harmer. And she said, "Sometimes I want to kill myself, that's why I want to have a baby." She was thinking that somehow having a baby would deflect her from this course.

Q: Yikes! Were you able to follow up with her?

A: No, but I did send her a copy of "A Long Way Down" [Hornby's oddly uplifting novel about four suicidal people], because it seemed appropriate.

My suspicion is that teen pregnancy in the UK will remain high. I think that given how easy it is in the UK to get birth control, and abortions, that it's a conscious decision now to have or keep a baby. Which is true of Alicia — she won't listen to her parents saying, "We don't mind if you have an abortion." She wants to keep the baby.

Q: Abortion is discussed in "Slam," but not the question of adoption.

A: That wasn't a conscious decision. When I've listened to debates, it always seems to be about abortion versus keeping the child. I guess I couldn't imagine that kids now would be clear-sighted enough to think that they could go through the whole process and then give the child away.

I know it's something that used to happen a lot in this country (Britain), but now there's more of a benefits trap — I think a lot of people in the underclass want kids so they can get the benefits, so adoption becomes an unattractive option. But I was more concerned with the abortion side of things, trying to figure out why Alicia wouldn't have an abortion.

Q: Although Sam's girlfriend certainly wasn't a member of the underclass.

A: No, the book is fairly precise about class. Sam's the working-class boy, though he has greater hopes and dreams than his middle-class girlfriend — or her parents.

Q: I've mercifully blanked out my teen years. Was it hard to write in the voice of a teenage boy?

A: Well, writing's always tough, but this was no tougher than usual. And my teen years are incredibly clear to me — I can bring that person back at will. I think that helped, because I know the kind of panic, fear and confusion that I would have had in Sam's situation.

Q: You've remarked that not many funny books win the Booker Prize. It's true for the Pulitzer and the National Book Award, too — most heavyweight writers tend to be somber.

A: Yeah, the easiest way to be considered literary is to excise the humor. I think partly it's a situation created by readers. If we have not much time to read, we feel that what we do take up should be serious and worthwhile, rather than something that's easy to read. And books with humor tend to be easier to read. Which for me is a good thing!

I'm constantly telling people to give up on books that are killing them. I don't think books were meant to be read at a crawl and with gritted teeth. And I think there are ways of being intelligent without being alienating. That's an ideal I'm striving for.