Smack

A cheerful tale of underage runaway teenagers in 1980's Bristol in a downward spiral of drug abuse, crime, prostitution and drug dealing. Sorry - I'm being sarcastic - not very cheerful at all really. I wasn't really expecting to enjoy this book as much as I did - I don't usually go for gritty realism - but I actually stayed up late to finish it.

Tar runs away from an abusive father and alcoholic mother and his girlfriend Gemma follows some weeks later when her parents overreact about their relationship. Initially befriended by Richard, an anarchist (whose main act of anarchy seems to consist of putting super-glue in the locks of banks to stop them opening), Gemma feels patronised by the slighly older people in their squat who she show more accuses of acting like her parents and both her and Tar move out into another squat with the younger Rob and Lily, both heroin users. And everything goes downhill from there. Gemma and Tar both become locked into a cycle of self-deception that they are not really junkies and could stop any time they want to, and Gemma ends up working as a prostitute to pay for her habit while Tar steals from everyone he knows. The cycle is only broken when Gemma becomes pregnant and wants to keep the baby.

I found this a very well written book. Both Gemma and Tar were believable fairly normal teenagers who had got themselves into circumstances they could not cope with because of their family circumstances. Each chapter is narrated by a different character including the parents of Gemma and Tar and it is clear that everyone is deceiving themselves to a certain degree. The book raises some interesting issues about the destructive nature of illegal versus legal drugs. Tar's mother is an alcoholic and we learn at the end that Tar's father is an alcoholic as well. Alcohol has been equally destructive in the father's life as heroin has been in his son's and both seem equally unable to face the consequences of their actions. Very thought provoking.
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Gingerbread, Can Steffie Come out to Play, and Go Ask Alice. If you loved any of these novels containing painfully obnoxious teens who mess up their lives, than you'll love Smack. This would be dangerously promoting drugs if the reader doesn't finish the novel, as the narrators glorify the drugs while they're still enjoying them. A teen picking up the novel, glancing through, or merely not finishing it would be facing the same consequences as all the kids who learned how to purge their meals from the confessions of teens with eating disorders on Oprah. However, keep reading, and you're as excited about doing heroine as you were after watching "Trainspotting" (which forever connected the image of smack in my mind with dead, blue show more infants).

Burgess eerily captures the rational teens use to justify stupid choices so accurately, that it was embarrassing to remember that I was just like that at one time. Teens don't just decide one day that they're going to be a junkie and a prostitute because that's a great career choice, but rather experience a slow decline that seems perfectly rational and even idealistic; it's scary. For the record, I've never been a junkie or a prostitute, but the voice of the female characters was so familiar that I've left this novel thinking that I avoided that fate merely by the luck of the draw. Had I been in the wrong place at the wrong time, who knows? And that is pretty scary. My favorite line: "The need for self-deception in a situation of dependency is quite staggering." And I don't think this applies only to a dependency on any particular substance: it can be dependency on people, security, situations, a job even. Really got me thinking.

Burgess creates detestable characters who are entirely sympathetic, forcing the reader to consider how fragile and vulnerable we may all be. If a teen were to stick with the novel and finish it, I'd recommend it, but not if they were going to dabble in it without seriousness. I particularly appreciate Burgess's ability to honestly portray disturbing issues without any gore or unnecessary imagery. For example, a girl is brutally sexually assaulted, and the way it was presented, I didn't get physically or emotionally ill by it for a change; I could still grapple with all of the implications of the event without being destroyed (as I was by reading "Kite Runner"). Burgess leaves enough to the imagination but also exposes enough X-rated situations faced by the characters to make it realistic enough (as opposed to Go Ask Alice).

In all, it kept me reading, left me thinking, and overall exposes sad truths in an 80's British Punk scene (which was a delightful treat!). I DID wish that I had known about the glossary of unfamiliar British slang in the back! It would've saved me some time and frustration. I had to read the term "screw" in context over a dozen times to get that it meant a prison guard! show less

I was up a goodly portion of the night reading this book. I didn't mean to be. It's that kind of book, though.

Stark, brilliant and uncompromising, this is the story of a couple of kids who find a life less ordinary in the squats of early 1980s England. They also find heroin and love, though they have a hard time telling the two apart.

The way Burgess moves his reader from the head of one kid into the head of the next is a perfect vehicle to show how their interdependent rationalizations function. The slippery slope from self-serving narcissistic adolescence to self-serving narcissistic drug addiction is delineated in letters of fire here. The adults on the fringes are nicely drawn as well. The way people wander in and out of the circle show more is so well done as to be almost invisible.

This is a searing portrait of addiction and ruin that rings so true it's painful to read. The characters are not particularly sympathetic, but that also seems right.

Extremely minor quibble: there's a perfectly unnecessary glossary in the back- all the British slang is completely obvious in context. show less

This story had me enthralled from beginning to end. The excitement at the punk music concerts, the young love, the freedom, the manipulating entrapment of drugs, the heartbreaking love of a baby and the way having a child can completely change you. A

A gritty, raw, powerful, emotional roller coaster worth the ride. You'll be angry, you'll laugh, and you'll cry. Burgess doesn't sugar coat anything. I love the realness he portrays of how impressionable and naive teens can be no matter what background you come from or what scene you're in. That no matter what it only takes seconds for your life to spiral out of control. By the end of the book I wanted so badly to sew their lives back together.

As much as parents were outraged that this book show more was in my school library I think this book catapulted my revulsion of how heroin can ruin lives. Still to this day I've never touched the stuff, beyond that the characters are almost all junkies it's a story about finding out who you really are and accepting it or changing it for the better.

Two points of view in first person: Gemma and Tar. Tar is a runaway from an abusive alcoholic father, a loving street kid with something worth running from. Gemma your typical spoiled brat runaway, nothing really worth running from just looking for rebellion. I loved and hated her character at the same time. The first couple chapters made me want to slap her mouth off and tell her to grow up. Along the way they meet vegan anarchists and all end up squatting in an abandoned house in Bristol. At a big party at the squat they meet a couple who introduce them to smoking heroin, the two young punks think smoking it won't get them addicted but they couldn't be more wrong. Doing whatever means to get their fix.(prostitution, stealing) After attempts to get clean, going cold turkey, failing, and getting caught. Tar takes the blame and goes to prison. Gemma, now pregnant with Tars baby, moves back in with her parents to remain clean. The heart wrenching part in all this to me? She dosent trust tar to stay clean, for almost 4 years. Eventually after release from prison and getting clean from methadone he visits his daughter. show less

This is an excellent book I highly recommend. I almost want to give it 5 stars, but not quite. It tells a very ugly tale, 5 or 6 years in the life of some English teen runaways who get hooked on heroin. My favorite thing about this book is the way Burgess tells the tale from multiple points of view. Almost every character gets at least a brief moment to tell the story from their point of view, and Burgess never shies away from complexity. Everyone's view is different, everyone's got a side to the story, no one is totally evil, no one is totally good. I love the way Burgess handles that. It shows great bravery on his part and takes great skill to accomplish. I'd like to be able to do that with my own writing.

To sum up the book and save you the horror: 1) Running away often leads to drug addiction and other unsavory things. 2) Drugs are bad. 3) Drug addiction leads to more unsavory things, but don't expect this book to be clear about any of them.

I'm having difficulty finding anything good for young adolescents about drug use. They all read (including the much-hailed, much-maligned Go Ask Alice) as pathetic attempts to scare kids, and the information is as incomplete as it is uninteresting. However, on to this book:

As a former heroin addict who has been clean for well over a decade, I may be slightly biased in that I really don't need a book to "scare me straight." I knew going in that I didn't feel like reading yet another drug-elogue. Even show more if I did, this wouldn't be the one. It's hard to know where to begin, since virtually everything is wrong with this book, and I couldn't find anything to make me like it. I simply pushed through because I tend to do that with books, good or bad. Characters so flat, it was a bit like trying to get a story out of a person nodding out every ten seconds (very frustrating for those of you who've never had the pleasure.) Second, there's a blatant message of "DRUGS = BAD." OK, we got that way back when Ron and Nancy were in the White House. Heck, we had it when Sid and Nancy exploded...and all the other people before and after them. Everyone knows heroin is bad. Ignorance of this fact is not the reason people become addicts. With flat writing, characters and "plot." and a message that beats you about the head like a PSA, there is no way to recommend this book. So many books more accurately and honestly portray the truth of heroin addiction, and they do it in a nuanced, complete and meaningful manner. Despite my love of the shape and texture of this book, I cannot recommend anything within said cover. show less

At times, this book can be confusing if perhaps you are not familiar with British slang. Luckily, it's fairly easy to follow if you go by context for the most part.

I read the original version of this when I was in high school and I was completely fascinated with the little world that Burgess creates. At times this book can be shocking, the content is very vividly written. I enjoyed it a great deal and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a reality-based book.