Letter #1

For my first lit circle letter this month, im going to talk about the book I chose to read. This book is called Smack by Melvin Burgess. I chose this book because it definitely caught my attention. The book is called Smack because smack is another name for heroin. A couple months ago I read a book called Crank, which is also a nickname for meth. The book I read was super good, and ive been looking for a book similar to it since. According to the back, Smack is a book about a fourteen-year-old boy named Tar, who is physically abused by his alcoholic father and mentally abused by his alcoholic mother. So of course he runs away. He gets his girlfriend Gemma to come along too, and they think they’ve found the perfect life. They live in an abandoned house with some of Gemmas friends who invite him to take his first hit of smack. It goes from thinking they can quit at anytime, to doing anything to just get there next hit.
Ive read up to my first paper clip and I must say, this book has got my full attention. Its very well written. The author is from England and the story also takes place there, so sometimes they use different words and it can get confusing. But the story line is very clear and it definitely makes you want to keep reading to know what is going to happen next. Another good thing about the book is that it’s not the same person telling the whole story. Every chapter is by a different character, its great because it’s a different point of view every time. As the story progresses and gets more characters, they start to have there own chapters too. It’s a really cool book so far =)