Tuesday, June 30, 2009

SMASHED a story of drunkin girlhood


From earliest experimentation to habitual excess to full-blown abuse, twenty-four-year-old Koren Zailckas leads us through her experience of a terrifying trend among young girls, exploring how binge drinking becomes routine, how it becomes "the usual." With the stylistic freshness of a poet and the dramatic gifts of a novelist, Zailckas describes her first sip at fourteen, alcohol poisoning at sixteen, a blacked-out sexual experience at nineteen, and total disorientation after waking up in an unfamiliar New York City apartment at age twenty-two, when she realized she had to stop, and all the depression, rage, troubled friendships, and sputtering romantic connections in between. Zailckas's unflinching candor and exquisite analytical eye get to the meaning beneath the seeming banality of girls getting drunk. She convinces us that her story is the story of thousands of girls like her who are not alcoholics—yet—but who use booze as a short cut to courage, a stand-in! for good judgment, and a bludgeon for shyness, each of them failing to see how their emotional distress, unarticulated hostility, and depression are entangled with their socially condoned bingeing.


This book was ok...I probably wouldn't suggest it b/c there was no real climax or "Ah.Ha" moment. She also rambled from time to time about statics and things about drinking that really had nothing to do w/ the story. Just kinda like a page and 1/2 of her opinion on the commercializing of alcohol products or something randomly thrown in every now and then.


I give this one & 1/2 bookmarks mainly for the subject matter.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey you need to blog again. i promise i will follow now!! :)

<3

Farnnay said...

So was it based on the authors' life or was it a story she made up?

reese said...

based on the author's life

 

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