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| View Larger Image | Smack
by Melvin Burgess
| | List Price: | $7.99 |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 29478 | | Studio: | HarperTeen | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Reading Level: | Young Adult | | Number Of Pages: | 304 | | Publication Date: | May 01, 1999 | | Publisher: | HarperTeen |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Gemma:"My parents are incompetent. They haven't got a clue..."Tar: "I know it sounds stupid, but it was like the flowers had come out for Gemma..." Lily: "They did everything they could to pin me down...my mum, my dad, school..." Rob:"We stood for a while breathing big long breaths of air. It was cold and pure...You could feel it inside you, doing you good." How do these teens come to run away from home? To be users? Addicts? As their stories intertwine and build, SMACK never lets up the pace. It is a book about people, families--real and those constructed by young people with no one to turn to but each other. SMACK is a book about a drug and the hold it can have. Written directly for its audience of young people and unflinching in its honesty, SMACK is the teen book of the year. |
Amazon.com
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 |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 209 reviews)
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Awesome 
This is a great story that is realitic story about drugs, but not preachy. The characters are all very beleivable, and most teens will probably be able to see themselves or some friends in at least one characer. Having every chapter written by a different character also gives the reader a full circle outlook on the plot of the book. Great read
May 29, 2008 | |
awesome book
i just finished reading this book and it was absolutely awesome. very cheap came very fast!
-hollywood
April 09, 2008 | |
This book is not Junk
This was a quick read, a Go-Ask-Alice-type tome of addiction. The novel is told from multiple perspectives, but the main perspectives are from Gemma and Tar. They run away from home at 14, get in with some squatters, and before they know it, they're hooked on heroin. It's an incredibly crazy lifestyle, but Burgess tells it well. His narrative is smooth considering the constantly changing perspectives; each individual's voice is distinct.
January 08, 2008 | |
Will leave an indelible mark on all who read it 
As SLJ had said "Powerful and calculated... Smack is not a lecture to be yawned through. IT'S A SLAP IN THE FACE." Smack goes into other aspects of drug addictions that many other books don't deal with, like how there is a major focus on squatting, and at the end of the book there is a note on squatting. The note on squatting also explains how it's not illegal in the UK like it is in other countries. The book shows how the characters deal with the repercussions associated with their addiction, such as stealing. The book uses many english slang terms and has a glossary to help you with some of the slang, which is very helpful for those who don't really understand the english slang. I have learned many things from Smack and many things I would have never even imagined. Smack is literally a slap in the face that will leave you thinking about it for days.
December 12, 2007 | |
SMACK
This book, is great. i would give it a 10 out of 5. i read this and couldnt out it down. first, two teenage runaways try to find shelter. they face many obsticles and make it all the way but get addicited to herion.
March 27, 2007 | |
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