Smack

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.

The flow of Melvin Burgess novel Smack, literally smacks of a Ben Stein-like monotone narrating on the horrors of heroin addiction, but skipping over the horror part. Meant to be for teens, as an "OMG, this could happen to YOU", it winds out being a tedious stroll through glossed over pages.

There is no emotion in the characters; indeed, the book uses ten different POV's, and each of them read as identical personalities. If you opened the book randomly, you would not be able to differentiate between narrators, even though they range from teenager to parents' POV.

Compared to some really great novels on drug and heroin abuse like Luke Davies "Candy", Linda Glovich's "Beauty Queen", and the oldie but goodie "Go Ask Alice", "Smack" does nothing more than portray shallow teens with the message "heroin is messy". It reminds me a bit of Mr. Mackey in the South Park series..."Drugs are bad, m'kay? You shouldn't do drugs...m'kay?"

Burgess pays more attention to Gemma's party dress than her withdrawal symptoms, and only once in over 300 pages mentions the crime of theft that goes hand and hand with street drug use.

There is a horrifying decay of the soul that goes with drug addiction, and in a glossy, let's-skim-over-the-messy-parts portrayal such as "Smack", the message is lost for those who may truly need a slap-in-the-face wake up call.

Save yourself the money, and pick up Candy, Beauty Queen, or Go Ask Alice instead of this shallow and emotionless mess.

When I picked this up, I was expecting some kids to think drugs were cool, then run with a fast sex, drugs, and rock n' roll crowd, have a huge tragedy strike, and then get the propaganda message that DRUGS ARE BAD (think "Go Ask Alice"). Boy, was I in for a surprise. This book is an easy read, but a much more complex tale than a simple parable about how drugs are bad.

The two main characters, Tar and Gemma, leave home for things that every teenager in the world has felt in some way. Tar is abused, and leaves the hell of homelife for peace on the streets. Gemma represents every teenager who is smarter than her parents and resents their control over her life. She leaves for less justifiable reasons than Tar, but her emotions are ones anyone can identify with.

There are a lot of people on the streets and in the squats--anarchists, straight-edge vegans, punks, pot smokers, and heroin users. Tar and Gemma find friends and their own form of a family, and it is very easy to see how they slipped into the world of drugs, namely heroin.

This book has shocking events in it, but the characters are so numb to it all that they describe it in a subtle and offhand manner. Girls who sell the bodies for drug money in no way consider themselves prostitutes, because they have standards and they do it "on their terms," and on and on. The reader gets sucked up in this life and I found myself wanting to smack these characters and say, NO, what you are doing is not justifiable.

This book has a beautiful ending that took me by surprise. No, the world is not covered in roses in the end, but neither has everyone succumbed to hell.

I'd like to make a comment about the appropriate age for this book. My sister is a voracious reader. She's now 17 and was able to appreciate this book when we both read and discussed it, but she had tried to read it at age 9 or 10, and it was too much for her to handle at that age. This is a book for early high school, not for middle school readers.

Just about everyone has heard (although they may not heed) the message "drugs are bad," and heroin especially conjures up a vague fear of needles, AIDS and white powder. After you read "Smack", those fears will be sharpened into an acute knowledge of a horrible drug; a so-honest-it-hurts portrait of addiction that holds you fast throughout the book, daring you to even look away for a second.
Tar and Gemma are two fourteen year olds in 1980's England who run away from home. Tar has two alcoholic parents and his father beats him, while Gemma is a fairly priveliged girl who feels smothered by her parents and wants to rebel. Once they get to Bristol, they are accepted by a group of anarchist squatters. Gemma especially enjoys the carefree life of joints, booze and gluing the bank locks shut, and gets involved in the punk scene. Even after Tar and Gemma consummate their relationship, they start to grow more and more distant.
Along with the punk scene, Gemma meets Lily, a vivacious and charming teenager that she bonds with immediately. Lily and her friends later teach Gemma to smoke heroin. Tar is wary at first, but Lily pressures him into it. From there, Tar and Gemma's already gritty crashes and grows darker. They both become addicted and start to use needles. Gemma and Lily turn to prostitution to pay for their habit and Tar begins to steal.
"Smack" has an unfortunately slow and boring beginning that may turn some readers off at first, but you should definitely stick with it, as it gets much more interesting and gripping later.
The best thing about "Smack" is its reality. "Smack" does show why people do heroin, and it does reveal that a heroin high is supposedly an incredible state of bliss. But it doesn't flinch from showing the dark underbelly of drug use in a starkly realistic light. On Tar's struggle to free himself from heroin's sweet snare, he doesn't get off right away and meets many stumbling blocks to being clean. The ending is also excellent, not overly tragic, but realistic, and with an ambivalent mood of hope and dark outlook.

Being a forensics nurse, working in correctionals, I am always searching for information about heroin and other drugs. I was intitially intrigued with this story line as it seemed to represent the beginning of the disease itself. Heroin is huge now in America, with most of my female inmates intimately familiar with the drug. This novel was targeted for Young Adults, which I have some reservations about. It romanticized the process more than I feel is appropriate. The issue of runaways is important, however I rarely see them so well taken care of. Usually they are brutally exploited, where the characters in this novel were fortunate to fall into the hands of indivduals that tried to protect them. There is alot of content to consider. This is not a book that relates a huge source of information about heroin abuse, it is more of a peripheral story of many social situations affecting youngsters and those that never stop living on the fringes of danger and decadence.

This is undeniably the worst book I have ever had the misfortune of reading. Even more offensive then the monotonous writing technique, the story line is excruciatingly predictable, with muddled unidentifiable characters, all of which have vague personal motives devoid of genuine emotional profundity or complexities. For the most part, the characters behave like complete idiots. They do not translate to real life. The writer's lack of bias comes across as feeble narrative. I don't recommend this book. I especially do not recommend it for adolescent readers because it falls perilously short of realistically articulating the horrors of actual drug addiction.

I recently saw the movie Requiem for a dream. The movie is about the downward spiral of addiction between a mother and her son. while reading this novel I continued to put both the movie and the book together. Of course you do not have to see Requiem for a dream in order to read this novel or even to feel the power of this book. I bought this book because of the subject matter. I was unaware that it was labeled "young adult" and that title put me off a bit. I preferibly like to read books that are hard to read and at the end you feel like you have accomplished something. Smack is an easy read, but is written amazingly. Melvin Burgess does a superb job building his characters and writing from each person's perspective. Each chapter is another character's first account of each situation. When i first began reading, I thought to myself...well this won't be a challenge anyone with a 3rd grade reading level could read this, but the way Burgess writes is amazing.
The story is about 2 teenage runaways. Gemma and Tar are lovebirds, each escape from a horrible home life. Tar was abused by his fater and both of his parents were alcoholics. Gemma's parents controlled every part of her life. Her father dropped and picked her up from school and even went as far as to tell her boss at work that she could no longer work there.
Together they "squat" in abadoned houses and flats and that is when their downward spiral begins with heroin. The situations that each of the characters find themselves in really broke my heart. the bad choices they made and the consequences that never seemed to come for them. I found it amazing the way the characters could never see the harm in heroin or the way they denied it. One minute they would be talking about getting clean and the next minute they would be chatting about where they would score again. Amazing work by Burgess.
The love story between Gemma and Tar was amazing. The outcome i was a little let down, but overall nothing is ever as perfect as we would like it to be.
The part of this book that really moved me almost to tears was the 2nd to last chapter where tar's dad is the subject. He looks back on his life and compares his life to tar's. Having a hard life of my own...it really made me look at how parents, no matter how bad of a parent they were can still find their heart.
Overall: I would recommend this book to anyone that would like to see where drug addiction gets you. A close friend of mine became a heroin addict and because of this book i can almost see a glimpse of what his life must have been like on the streets. We all make choices in life and the choice to become a drug addict is a sad and painful story to read or see. Such a powerful piece of literature.

Smack is an acount of two runaway's that are addicts. It glimpses into the life of an addict. They think they are in control and that they can stop at any time, but later come to realize that they are truly addicted. Teens experimenting with drugs, alcohol, and sex. Reading the book you feel a curiosity and also a sadness. I felt bad for the people in the book. And I think thats a good thing.

It is an extremely honest book that dosen't hold back and tells the entire truth and describes all the conditions and all the feelings. It doesn't preach to you and talk about how wrong something is. It doesn't even say that it's wrong. It simply makes you think and to almost pity the characters in the book.

It's a slap in the face. It truly sadened and horrified me, but at the same time, I couldn't put the book down. I definatly think everyone should read it.

I really really enjoyed this book, so much so that I have read it on more than one occasion. The story is about two teen lovers who run away only to fall heavily into heroin. The book details the extremes these kids go through to get their fix and how it affects other lives around them.

I certainly recommend this book.

This book is a simply written, somewhat shocking read of teenage drug addiction and the seemingly ingradual process of innocence to innocence lost through unbearably addictive heroin.
It is a grossly easy, fast and hugely enthralling read, and like previous reviewers, I was throughout the work reminded of the superb 2000 film 'Reqiuem for a Dream'. Similarly, 'Smack' documents the fallout of innocent somewhat naive characters into a frighting drug underworld of prostitution and crime.
Put simply, the piece is really about the brief passage of time between control and addiction, and suggests that even the most seemingly in control can never understand when and why the boundaries between enjoyment and sickness have crossed over.
The demise of the characters is both disturbing and frightening, especially Tar, who eventually comes to represent the cold brutality he so despises in his father. This again suggests that no one can ever truly be in control, that we are all one step, one injection away from chaos, that we are all non practicing addicts. It is a scary thought, certainly, and the composer illustrates how heroin addiction can take place in a mere matter of weeks.
The book, while beyond tame in comparison to the utterly disturbing and life changing 'Reqiuem for a Dream', still contains images that will forever play in your head. A teenage addict calming her addicted child by putting grains of heroin in
her gums, for example.
However, I found the book slightly simplistic in the approach to drugs in general. It suggests that all drugs like marijauna will certainly lead to heavier things and dependencies, and whilst many do, a great proportion do not. Thus this forms the basis of my four star rating.
Despite this tiny flaw, this is a completely valuable and worthwhile read and a superb portrayal of the horrors of drugs. It illustrates how fine that line is between in and out of control is.