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Journal Entry 1 by spaceystacey from Bridgeton, New Jersey USA on Saturday, October 13, 2007
 Very realistic! Loved it! Passing on as a RABCK.
Sent out to yourotherleft 10/19/2007 because she had this book on her wishlist. I hope she enjoys it.
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Journal Entry 2 by yourotherleft from Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania USA on Monday, October 22, 2007
This book made a speedy trip to my doorstep. I've written the BCID in, and I'm looking forward to reading it! Thanks for making a wish come true, Stacey! =D
Amazon.com
Like so many teenagers, Tar and Gemma are fed up with their parents. Tar's family is alcoholic and abusive, and Gemma feels her home life is cramped by too many restrictions. The young, British couple runs away to Bristol in search of freedom, and finds it in the form of a "squat." This vacant building is also occupied by two slightly older teens who share everything with Tar and Gemma (including their heroin habits). For a while, everything is parties and adventures, but slowly Tar and Gemma find themselves growing more and more dependent on the drug--whose strict mandates are even less forgiving than those of the parents they fled. As Gemma says, "You take more and more, and more often. Then you get sick of it and give up for a few days. And that's the really nasty thing because then, when you're clean, that's when it works so well."
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.
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Journal Entry 3 by yourotherleft at Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania USA on Sunday, August 22, 2010
This is a really raw, gritty story about the realities of drug addiction. It's hard to read, but it's hard to look away from, too. Unbelievably sad what drugs can turn people into.
This is travelling to Appa now for the Teen VBB on BookObsessed.com. Enjoy(?)!
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Smack
