Smack [Paperback]

Melvin Burgess (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 8, 2010

I can give it up any time I want . . .

Sometimes maybe you need an experience. The experience can be a person or it can be a drug. The experience opens a door that was there all the time but you never saw it. Or maybe it blasts you into outer space. This time it was Lily and Rob and Gemma spending all that time to make me feel one of them, but it was the drug too. All that crap—about Gemma leaving me, about Mum and Dad, about leaving home. All that negative stuff. All the pain . . .
     It just floated away from me, I just floated away from it . . . up and away . . .
     I leaned back and I looked at the book and I looked at them and Gemma smiled at me, a big soft smile, and her eyes were like marbles.
     “Better?” she said.

 

Smack is the winner of the 1996 Carnegie Medal in Literature.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Like so many teenagers, Tar and Gemma are fed up with their parents. Tar's family is alcoholic and abusive, and Gemma feels her home life is cramped by too many restrictions. The young, British couple runs away to Bristol in search of freedom, and finds it in the form of a "squat." This vacant building is also occupied by two slightly older teens who share everything with Tar and Gemma (including their heroin habits). For a while, everything is parties and adventures, but slowly Tar and Gemma find themselves growing more and more dependent on the drug--whose strict mandates are even less forgiving than those of the parents they fled. As Gemma says, "You take more and more, and more often. Then you get sick of it and give up for a few days. And that's the really nasty thing because then, when you're clean, that's when it works so well."

With Smack, winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Prize for Fiction, Melvin Burgess brilliantly sketches a gradual descent into drug addiction. There is no preaching here, just the artful revelation of cold, hard facts. Burgess's use of the first-person voice--for not only the main characters but those in the background as well--brings you into the mind of every character in this homeless, hooked culture, offering a (sometimes terrible) glimpse of the motivations and transitions of each person. (Tar's personality changes dramatically over the course of the book, from sweet-natured, lonely boy to hard-edged, hit-seeking addict.) More subtle and less graphic than Beauty Queen, Linda Glovach's tale of a girl's downward spiral into heroin addiction, Smack will linger in the your mind long after its haunting conclusion has been reached. (Ages 13 and older) --Brangien Davis --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In a starred review of this "searing" account of teens who become addicted to heroin, PW wrote that the "unflinching depiction of the seductive pleasures as well as insidious horrors of heroin... will leave an indelible impression on all who read it." Ages 12-up. (May)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Square Fish; First Edition edition (June 8, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312608624
• ISBN-13: 978-0312608620
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (220 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #135,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #22 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Teens > Social Issues > Drug Use & Abuse > Fiction
  • #23 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Children's Books > Issues > Drugs
  • #26 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Children's Books > People & Places > Social Issues > Runaways

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling and Scary Downward Spiral, October 10, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Smack (Paperback)

This is the story Tar and Gemma, two teenagers, who run away from their families in search of freedom and end up in a prison of their own creation -- drug addiction. This is a truly compelling book and I felt myself swept along in total sympathy with the main characters. At first it's all fun and games until they realize that you can't run away from certain basic human needs: the need for a home (which becomes a squat), the need for family (which becomes a group of squatters, who sadly are also junkies). It's only a matter of time before the lure of drugs (as a bonding ritual) takes over -- and then we watch these characters spiral downward. I read this book right after another Amazon purchase -- The Losers' Club by Richard Perez -- and while that novel isn't about drug addiction, but a 'failed,' lonely writer addicted to the personal ads, I was reminded of the need we all have to belong, to feel ALIVE. The story of Smack reminds us that we can never escape from ourselves, from certain innate human needs. And when we try to break away from the more traditional ways of life, those needs, that loneliness to belong is still there. I truly love this book and would recommend it to anyone. It's beautifully written and compelling. And sadly true.

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling and Scary Downward Spiral, October 1, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Smack (Paperback)

This is the story Tar and Gemma, two teenagers, who run away from their families in search of freedom and end up in a prison of their own creation -- drug addiction.

This is a truly compelling book and I felt myself swept along in total sympathy with the main characters. At first it's all fun and games until they realize that you can't run away from certain basic human needs: the need for a home (which becomes a squat), the need for family (which becomes a group of squatters, who sadly are also junkies). It's only a matter of time before the lure of drugs (as a bonding ritual) takes over -- and then we watch these characters spiral downward.

I read this book right after another Amazon purchase -- The Losers' Club by Richard Perez -- and while that novel isn't about drug addiction, but a "failed," lonely writer addicted to the personal ads, I was reminded of the need we all have to belong, to feel ALIVE. The story of Smack reminds us that we can never escape from ourselves, from certain innate human needs. And when we try to break away from the more traditional ways of life, those needs, that loneliness to belong is still there. I truly love this book and would recommend it to anyone. It's beautifully written and compelling. And sadly true.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hard to take, but very worth it, December 12, 2000

By 

Edward Aycock (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Smack (Paperback)

I read this book this past year in my class, "Materials for Young Adults." I was shocked, not at the lurid subject matter and grittiness, but at how well written it was and how much I really enjoyed it. People may have objections to the sex and to the drug use, (and the girl with the see through dress), but at its heart, this book in NO way glamorizes drug use. Must we put a moral thermometer on everything? This is just a book about two young kids who run away from home and get caught up in the English world of squatters and heroin. I like how this book shows that not all squatters are a bunch of junkies. In fact, many of the squatters try and stop our "heroes" from getting involved with the wrong crowd. The squatters form a type of family, and drugs tear them apart in the end.

There has been a lot of controversy about this book, and whether or not it has a place in the classroom. (Some of this has been around whether a child should just READ this book on their own time.) I say the more who read it, the better. This book is much more than a cautionary tale; it's a darn good read in and of itself. And yes, it is perfectly well suited for adults as well.