| |
From earliest experimentation to habitual excess
to full-blown abuse, twenty-four-year-old Koren Zailckas
leads us through her experience of a terrifying tre nd
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.
A crucial book for any woman who has succumbed to
oblivion through booze, or for anyone ready to face
the more subtle repercussions of their own chronic
overdrinking or of someone they love, "Smashed" is
an eye-opening, wise, and utterly gripping tour de
force. |
|
