Smack

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Look into Heroin addiciton
Review: The plot of this book is a two fourteen year olds run away and get heavily into living the street life. One of the main characters, Tar, runs away because his father beats him. Tar's girlfriend, Gemma, runs away because her parents are too strict and also to be with Tar. Life on the street was great for them at first. They had fun being together all the time and getting into trouble, but then they lose control of themselves and their lives. This book is a story of how they came to be in trouble and how they got out of trouble, but not always together.

I liked this book a lot. It taught me a lot about teenage runaways and addicts that I never knew before. It seemed to be very realistic. This book kept me very interested. It was a little slow to begin with, but eventually got really exciting. People who are interested in books with real life situations and conflicts would really enjoy this book.


Rating:
Summary: Shallow look at an ocean deep issue
Review: 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.


Rating:
Summary: amazing
Review: after reading this book i was blown away at how it affected my life and the way i perceive things. the way the characters fall perfectly into place as the story unfolds only adds to the immense amount of personality and thriving story this book is. Time and time again this book will always be one of my favorites.