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 SMASHED:
Story of a Drunken Girlhood
By Koren Zailckas
Viking (343 pages)
$21.95
ISBN: 0-670-03376-6
This isn't just one girl's story of sneaking drinks
in junior high, creeping out for night-long keg parties
in high school and binge-drinking weeknights and weekends
through college--it's also a valuable cautionary tale.
At 24 (her present age), Zailckas gave up drinking
after a decade of getting drunk, having blackouts and
experiencing brushes with comas, date rape and suicide.
She weaves disturbing statistics (from Harvard School
of Public Heath studies and elsewhere) into her memoir:
most girls will have their first drink by age 12, and
will have the experience of being drunk by 14; teenage
girls drink as much as their male peers, but their
bodies process it badly (they get drunk faster, stay
drunk longer and are more likely to die of alcohol
poisoning); and date rape and booze go hand-in-hand.
Zailckas had alcohol poisoning at 16 after a night
of downing shots at a party with friends, but having
her stomach pumped in the emergency room and enduring
a month of being grounded didn't check her desire to
drink. Fraternity keg parties led to drunken sexual
encounters not-quite-remembered; drinking began to
replace intimacy. Alcohol defined Zailckas's adolescence
and college years to such an extent that, as she tells
it, she lacks the tools to be an adult: she's unsure
how to maintain relationships and unclear about sex
without an alcohol buzz. Zailckas is unsparingly insightful
and acutely aware of what drinking can and does do
to girls. She explains that while kids are taught that
drugs are always dangerous, alcohol is perceived as
an acceptable rite of passage. Her book is deeply moving,
written in poetic, nuanced prose that never obscures
the dangerous truths she seeks to reveal. Agent, Erin
Hosier. (Feb. 7)
FORECAST: Zailckas should reach a varied readership:
she's a student of Mary Karr's (The Liar's Club), which
will garner a literary audience, and has also received
praise from those who work in the substance abuse field. |
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