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  • Smack by Melvin Burgess book cover
  • Smack by Melvin Burgess book cover
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Smack

by Melvin Burgess

Belonging, escape, and drug use

$19.77 USD
$19.77 USD $19.77 USD

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AlbakiReads Editorial

Belonging, escape, and drug use

In Smack, drug use is bound up with the desire to feel accepted and to get distance from painful circumstances. The supplied passage connects that experience to relationships with Lily, Rob, and Gemma, tensions with parents, and thoughts of leaving home. Its central subject is not presented in isolation: the excerpt places it alongside questions of belonging, family strain, and the appeal of escape. The book is categorized as young adult fiction focused on substance abuse, making these social pressures part of its stated subject matter.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Teens and young adults interested in fiction about substance use and its social context.
  • Readers seeking young adult stories that address belonging, family tensions, and leaving home.

Themes

Substance useBelonging and acceptanceFamily strainEscape from pain

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

I can give it up any time I want . . .

Sometimes maybe you need an experience. The experience can be a person or it can be a drug. The experience opens a door that was there all the time but you never saw it. Or maybe it blasts you into outer space. This time it was Lily and Rob and Gemma spending all that time to make me feel one of them, but it was the drug too. All that crap--about Gemma leaving me, about Mum and Dad, about leaving home. All that negative stuff. All the pain . . .
It just floated away from me, I just floated away from it . . . up and away . . .
I leaned back and I looked at the book and I looked at them and Gemma smiled at me, a big soft smile, and her eyes were like marbles.
Better? she said.

Smack is the winner of the 1996 Carnegie Medal in Literature.

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