Smashed. Growing Up A Drunk Girl - Hardcover

Zailckas, Koren

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091905591 ISBN 13: 9780091905590

Publisher: Ebury Press, 2005

Synopsis

The day Koren turned fourteen she emerged from her friend's kitchen clutching a bottle of Southern Comfort. At fifteen she and Natalle sneaked out one summer night, then next morning had to plece back together forgotten fragments of drink, men and misplaced clothes. At sixteen she was carried through the hospital doors unconscious. And so it began...Koren was a sweet and normal teenager, from a stable home and loving parents, yet throughout her teens and twenties she regularly drank herself to the point of obllvion. This is the shocking but utterly recognisable story of a girl who used alcohol to help herself grow up. It began by making her feel better and making life seem less scary. It helped her know who she was, how she felt. Over time, though, she found herself almost unable to meet anyone new or embark on any social occasion at college and, later, in work, without being drunk. Finally, Koren's experimentation descended into a chaotic, dangerous dependency, until, one day, she decided she needed help. Smashed is a beautifully written book and a brutally honest account of just how easy it is to surrender your life to binge drinking. Sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying, it is unfallingly sympathetic. Told in a voice that compels but never preaches, this is a book that needed to be written and demands to be read.

About this title

Review:

...recalls the numbed, anguished world of Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero -- Metro

A mortifyingly credible story... Smashed is liable to be the biggest conversation piece this side of 'America: The Book' -- New York Times, February 7th 2005

An astonishingly revealing debut ... Riveting. -- Kirkus

An original and moving book that...starts to explain why we seem to have a generation of binge-drinking teenage girls -- Observer

It is a testament to Zailckas’ hard, fast, clever writing that Smashed does grip from beginning to end -- Guardian

Smashed is generating a stronger buzz than a dozen kegs at a free house -- Sunday Independent

This beautifully written, oddly affecting book ought to be on the National Curriculum. -- India Knight, Sunday Times

Well and fiercely written, a stinging attack on the social pieties which a feel-good culture uses to sustain itself -- Sunday Telegraph

From the Publisher:

A beautifully written and deeply moving account of an adolescence shaped by alcohol - already a bestseller in hardback

About this edition

• Publisher: Ebury Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0091905591
• ISBN 13: 9780091905590
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368