Smack
by Melvin Burgess

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Book Reviews of Smack

Book Review: Brain Muzak.
Summary: 2 Stars

So our little friends leave home because of their taxing and not-so-taxing home lives (TAR--Predatory, dependent and drunk mother; "He-beats-me-and-mum-up" Father, who also seems to be an alcoholic. GEMMA-- My Parents Dont Let ME Do ANYTHING!!!! I am SOOOO SICK of having warm croissants every day for breakfast! GAWD! WHY can't things just be MY WAY?)

They move about the city, finding new homes and new people, and meet and consequentially fall in with a couple. Rob and Lily live in a vacant house they've taken over-- a squat-- and invite Tar and Gemma to stay with them. Obvious, not-so-subtle foreshadowing lets the reader know that things wil be "taking a turn for the worse." Nearly everything happens just they way Mommy told you it would. The Bad Guys--Lily and Rob--have a white powder on aluminum foil which they are preparing and inhaling. Come on, guys. It's JUST heroin. It won't hurt you. You can stop anytime you want. Try it, you'll like it. It just makes you happy, that's all. The Rebellious Risk-Taking Friend takes it, and convices the Innocent, Concerned, Shy Nice Boy to "DO IT." Gemma in particular holds the belief that she's STRONG so nothing can "get" her. In each chapter written from her point of view, she constantly states that she's not an addict, she's having fun, Lily would NEVER do something that could hurt her,--everyone's typical idea of a budding junky. She's not in real-life, actual junky denial, she's just playing to the camera.

Nearly every situation in the book refers to a standard belief or stereotype of exactly how one "falls into" junky-dom. Blaring, ominous foreshadowing jumps off the page at each "wrong turn" the characters make. You wouldn't even have to read the rest of the book once you got about 2/3 into it. They take a little. A little more. If you're going to inhale it, why not pop it? If you're going to pop it, why not mainline it? (quote courtesy of The Basketball Diaries.) So they start out small, move on up to daily usage, etc etc etc, and of course their lives are falling to pieces. Everything happened like it would in a Disney documentary of users-become-addicts. Focusing more on the relationships and petty, trivial incidents rather than the actual heroin use, it was just a soap opera at many times. Actually, no. At least soap operas don't try and take themselves seriously. The highs and lows of addiction as presented by the book could be summed up as "It made me feel sooo happy" and "My stomach has cramps. I am in withdrawal. Wow. This hurts badly. I wish I had some methadone. Oh wait, hi Tar! I missed you! Wow! Let's Have a Party!" I'd hope that anyone who has read books other than Bugsy Goes to School and The Little Engine that Could can tell you that the storyline was nicely packed up and in to give standard, cooky-cutter descriptions of situations, characters, and later on, junkies. Even removing the situation (heroin), the writing itself screams "Condensed Version. Abridged and Simplified." It's like a Drug Addicts On The Street Baby-Sitter's Club novel.

Overall, a predictable, rather boring attempt at being dramatic, chilling, eye-opening, whatever cliched words you'd want to describe your "groundbreaking report on how heroin ruins one's life." If you want a book to read on the beach while you watch your kiddies play, or during Silent Reading at your school, fine. Here it is. i gave it 2 stars not because it deserves more than the lowest possible, but because there could be worse. The only merit of the book that could deserve the extra star would probably be the fact that there was no in-your-face preaching. That was attained by the sheer ridiculousness of many of the chapters or characters, and the author's obvious lack of actual heroin-user knowledge.

Many people know that heroin and drug-addiction fiction is too many times garbage anyway. If you want UK addiction in poverty, with the whole 3 situations offered by Smack PLUS-- all the ACTUAL happenings of the day to day life of a junky, just go with Trainspotting.

It's really not surprising that the book is found in the Young Adults Fiction section, and Amazon has it categorised as Young Adults Grades 10-12, Children 12-Up Fiction General, and Juvenile Fiction. Because right there's your ultimate overall description. Juvenile.

Summary of Smack

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.

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

Literary Books

• Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Literary
• Teens