Winner of the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Prize for fiction, two of England's most prestigious awards, Smack tells a penetrating story about heroin use, a topic that is becoming familiar in the news and one of importance to teens everywhere. The story begins with Tar, a fourteen-year-old, who runs away from home. He convinces his girlfriend, Gemma, to come with him, and it is not long before they are engulfed in a loose community of people living in abandoned buildings. Everything seems to be turning out so well: they have a roof over their heads, food to eat, and a brand-new group of friends. And when Tar and Gemma try their first hit of smack, they think life will keep on getting better. But before long, they find they've lost control. The search for the next hit becomes all-consuming--until a disaster forces Gemma to take matters into her own hands. Insightful, haunting, and real, Smack is the Go Ask Alice of the '90s. It's a book that every teenager should read--then pass along to a friend. 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. (Ages 13 and older) --Brangien Davis Grade 10 UpABurgess has taken the toxic concoction of young adults and drug use and presented a chilling reality. This novel is about runaway teens "squatting" (inhabiting abandoned buildings) in Bristol, England. Heroin is the main character. The results of unleashed adolescent experimentation is the theme. The book is powerful and calculated, intent on affecting readers and shattering pat illusions. When 14-year-old Gemma follows her friend, Tar, to the city, she discovers a spirited life accentuated by drugs and free of authority. They soon take up with Lily and Rob, two young junkies. Lily is the personification of Lady Heroin. She's stimulating, erotic, irresistibly intoxicating, in the beginning. At the end, she's used up, wallowing in an almost unfathomable level of inhumanity, injecting smack into the veins between her breasts while nursing her baby. The descent of these young people as they plunge into the heavy-user category is brutally honest. Through first-person accounts, the characters present their circumstances and past experiences in a measured voice, devoid of warmth. Readers are kept at viewing distance. Tar alone is seen in a fragile and vulnerable light. Will YAs devour this novel? Absolutely. It is filled with punk culture, sex, drugs, and life on the edge. As repugnant and horrifying as the journey, the fascination of the feel-good, live-fast, die-young mentality has a sickly sweet lure. Smack is not a lecture to be yawned through. It's a slap in the face, and, vicariously, a hard-core dose of the consequences of saying "yes."AAlison Follos, North Country School, Lake Placid, NY Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. In a Carnegie Medalwinning novel (under the UK title, Junk) that cuts to the bone, Burgess puts a group of teenage runaways through four nightmarish years of heroin addiction. At 14, sweet-natured Tar leaves his small seaside town for Bristol to get away from his alcoholic, abusive parents. Gemma follows him to escape an infuriatingly repressive (to her, at least) home situation. Reveling in their newfound freedom, the two find shelter with a welcoming set of ``anarchists'' (punks) squatting in an abandoned building, then move on to live with Lily an