Junk

I believe the word "gritty" is the first adjective that comes to mind to describe this book. Burgess gives us a story of addiction and disintegration, followed by the struggle to rebuild a fully-functioning life. Tar, officially named David, runs away from his physically abusive father and

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emotionally manipulative mother. He heads to Bristol and falls in with some friendly vegan anarchists, who set him up with a place to live. His girlfriend, Gemma, comes to join him and after becoming dissatisfied with life in the anarchist squat, she meets two heroin addicts who invite her to come and live with them in their squat. She tries heroin, and then gets Tar to try it, and their addiction starts to spiral out of control. At first, they're just smoking it, but then they start injecting it. Burgess portrays their slipping into carelessness, first saying that none of the group ever shares needles, then they start sharing among their core group of 4, and then it becomes clear that no one really cares. The girls in the group either work the street or in a massage parlor, while the boys sell drugs or shoplift. Burgess does a good job of depicting the decay that addiction brings into their lives; it's an engrossing read, but not because it's glamorous, heroin-chic or anything like that. It was like watching a car wreck or someone fallen and bloody on the sidewalk. It was a lot like Trainspotting (the film), in some ways. In the end, Gemma and Tar clean up, but their relationship is unsalvageable. Part of the strength of the novel comes from the use of multiple voices to tell the story. You hear from Gemma and Tar, as well as the secondary characters: Gemma's mother, Tar's dad, Lily, Rob, Richard, and Skolly. It creates a more complete picture of outwardly radiating impact that addition has had on the lives in the novel. Appropriate for mature teens; I would not want younger teens reading this. It would be a good novel for a junior or senior English class, where students can read it with the guidance of a teacher. Recommended for public library teen collections, but it may be too controversial--sex AND drugs--for a school collection. There are some graphic descriptions of injection drug use included.

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I haven't read all of this book but so far i think that it is good. I like how it is so realistic and tells what actually goes on in the world other than the "perfect poeple" and what they do. In it there is a boy named Tar and he runs away and the author made it so he doesn't have a job and needs

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money and that is what it's like for people that run away.

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Well-depicted setting in a world that will be unfamiliar to many readers. Burgess fills the novel with slang, so much that a glossary is provided. This a good novel of a subculture that will be both foreign and intriguing to many readers.

This is an edgy adolescent lit book that transcends the genre. Adults will enjoy the story too. Smack is action-packed and full of all the good stuf no one will admit to liking.

Smack by Melvin Burgess drugs, sex, and anarchy, what's not to love? A sad yet happy story that I absolutely loved. It takes you through the hardships of two teenagers that ran away from home and learn to live on the streets. the boy ran away from a life of abuse while the girl ran away because her

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parents where too strict. a great story, with great life lessons. i recommend it to anyone and everyone, especially those having problems in their life.

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The isn't bad even though it's about drugs, and it's not preachy about it. It's real, you can feel what the characters are going through.
5Q, 5P; Cover Art: Okay.
This book is best suited for highschoolers and adults.
It was selected because it sounded different.
Grade (of reviewer): 11th
(JS-AHS-NC)

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

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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.

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Tar and Gemma are two teenagers who get fed up with their families and run away. Tar’s dad is abusive and both his parents drink way too much. Gemma thinks her parents are overprotective and won’t let her do anything. These British teens run away to squat, or live in a vacant house, off the

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Bristol streets. There they befriend many interesting people, some who try to steer them away from heroin and some who wholeheartedly embrace the drug. The drug wins out and Tar and Gemma become increasingly addicted to heroin, a drug that demands their complete attention. Though many horrific events happen to them and to many of their friends, they find themselves unable to walk away from the drug.

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The subject of drug addiction, pregnancy, homelessness and abuse is never an easy subject to deal with, especially when it comes to Young Adult novels, but Melving Burgess has managed to do it from the point of view of his two characters. While this is not a very cheerful book, it doesn't dwell on

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sordid details; rather, it shows the point of views of everyone involved in the lives of the two main protagonists and the reader is compelled to follow their descent into addiction. I do not perceive the ending as a 'happy ending', but there is hope, which is important if YA readers are to understand the result of such life-changing subjects as anything but completely negative and inevitable in the outcome. There can be ways out of homelessness, there are ways out of drugs and pregnancy doesn't mean the end of the world - in this, the book is completely different in its overall impressions from, say, the world of such books like 'Trainspotting' (Irvine Welsh).

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Young Adult novel set in 1980's England. Follows the story of two teen runaways and their downward spiral into heroin use. Ends on a hopeful note for one of the main characters and a doubtful note for the other. Well-written and feels very truthful. Clearly shows the self-deception associated with

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hard drug use - a good novel for teenagers to read.

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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

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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 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.

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This was okay. I read it in one sitting and it certainly didn't bore me but it wasn't anything spectacular. I couldn't really warm to Gemma- I just found her rather annoying. Tar was all right and Lily was definitely my favourite of the bunch. The story was all right though rather

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predictable...nothing happened that I didn't expect. It was an interesting enough read though not extremely memorable.

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Remembered one of my friends reading this when we were at secondary school so I had a fair idea of what this was about and what would happen.

Most of the characters really annoyed me and I felt like they needed a good slap most of the time. But I went from hating Gemma to actually sympathising with

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her when she was scared at how deep she'd gotten in.

Felt really angry with Lily and the way she behaved when she was pregnant and had her baby.

Would like to read more of Burgess's stuff.

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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

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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 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!

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I cannot remember the last time I disliked a book as much as this one, but I could not stop reading it. I did not like one character in the book. I don't think I was supposed to like them, but it would have been nice for at least one of them to have something that made me care about him or her.

This book is set in Bristol mid 1980s
Main characters are Tar and Gemma two loved up young runaways.
The end up in Bristol squatting they meet some dubious characters along the way.
Gradually they become addicted to Heroin this is the story of how they gradually overcome their addiction and how they

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try to get their lives back on track.
Not a cheery book but worth a read.
I read this book about 20 years ago 1st time I have ever re read a book.

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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

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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 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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This book was horrifyingly wonderful. The author did a nice job creating the characters.

Knocked out by this book. Couldn’t put it down.