Product Description
The day Koren turned fourteen she emerged from her friend's kitchen clutching a bottle of Southern Comfort. At fifteen she and Natalle sneaked out one summer night, then next morning had to plece back together forgotten fragments of drink, men and misplaced clothes. At sixteen she was carried through the hospital doors unconscious. And so it began...Koren was a sweet and normal teenager, from a stable home and loving parents, yet throughout her teens and twenties she regularly drank herself to the point of obllvion. This is the shocking but utterly recognisable story of a girl who used alcohol to help herself grow up. It began by making her feel better and making life seem less scary. It helped her know who she was, how she felt. Over time, though, she found herself almost unable to meet anyone new or embark on any social occasion at college and, later, in work, without being drunk. Finally, Koren's experimentation descended into a chaotic, dangerous dependency, until, one day, she decided she needed help. Smashed is a beautifully written book and a brutally honest account of just how easy it is to surrender your life to binge drinking. Sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying, it is unfallingly sympathetic. Told in a voice that compels but never preaches, this is a book that needed to be written and demands to be read.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 200 reviews)

NOO!

One of the worst books I've read in a long time...not sure what this author's other books are like.
November 27, 2008

"RELAPSE!" will be the title of the sequel.

For starters, the fact that you can get this book for a penny is a testament to how anxiously people are holding on to their copies of it. Unfortunately I paid full price when it came out.

I don't need to rehash all of the pros and cons that everyone else has already mentioned. I'll simply say that this girl got her contract through nepotism and has less reason to bitch than almost anyone I've ever known.

She grew up spoiled, supposedly had low self-esteem, couldn't relate to "boys" and portrays herself as a victim through the whole book. She never takes responsibility for her actions because this book has led me to believe that she's never had to. It was never her fault. It was demon alcohol!

She fancies herself a great writer and isn't. If this book were not repetitious it would have been about 50 pages long. It think that her editor should be fired and taken before a select group of furious bastinadoes.

This book is self-indulgent claptrap for our already slagheap of disposable culture that will soon be a mountain of books such as this blocking out the sun for the rest of us.

The gimmick of this book is that it should be read because her case is so common. It is common. That doesn't mean that it's worthwhile reading.

I'm a long term recovering alcoholic and I could have written a far superior book at the age of fifteen. Where's my agent!

This is a good read for masochists.
Kevin
November 21, 2008

Love this book!

This is one of my favorite books. I have read it twice already. I received this shipment very promptly. I love it!
November 04, 2008

We've all been there...I hope.

I definitely had my party years and some of Koren's life experiences seem to match my own. She doesn't hold back anything and her honesty about the Greek system is accurate. I feel a little less guilty now that I know someone else had the same thoughts running through their head that I did during these less than virtuous moments. I enjoyed this book, but there is a constant sadness in her writing that makes you want to hug yourself and say, "It will be better tomorrow." If you like reading about Greek Life,then you should also read COLLEGE LIFE EXTREME: Lies, Sex, Drugs and Violenceand Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities. Thanks Koren for sharing so much about your life with us! Your book will always have a special place on my bookshelf.
September 19, 2008

Not what I thought it would be...

This book isn't about alcohol abuse, really. It's about a girl from a priviledged family who grows up with lots of friends, becomes a college cheerleader/sorority sister, interns in New York, makes and maintains friendships along the way, and should be an all-around productive, happy citizen. But this girl, from an early age, wants to be a writer. She is especially awestruck by tortured female writers, like Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. I think she assumed that to be a great writer/poet, suffering is essential. Her driving force isn't alchohol, it's the pretense of alcohol abuse because it makes her appear to be tortured. She thinks misery drives creativity. Many great writers/artists are and were indeed lost souls, many with mental health problems. But the author's problems are all self-inflicted. "Look at how much I drink...I'm so tortured! Feel sorry for me!"
The more I read this book, the more I got the feeling that she had created a character in her own mind and was living it out. Maybe she should have gone into dramatic performance instead of writing. I wonder if the feminists she so hopelessly wants to impress with her smug treatment of men, are indeed impressed by her? She is certainly impressed enough with herself, blaming her actions on everyone around her.
I got the impression that once she felt that she had suffered enough, she had a book to write. If you continually choose to place yourself in stupid situations, that just makes you stupid, not deep. If you continually remain emotionally and physically detached from "boys," and play mind games with them, guess what, they're not going to stick around. It doesn't make you smarter than them, just more pathetic. This story is like a whiny love letter the author wrote to herself--"See, you are so tortured and filled with angst, you have suffered so greatly, you are a writer!" Making stupid choices and employing the overuse of simile and metaphor doesn't create a great writer...just an annoying story that is written in an annoying manner.
June 28, 2008

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