Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood

by Koren Zailckas

Book Overview

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, total...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670033766
• ISBN13: 9780670033768
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 342 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.9" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

go orange

I started reading this book because I recently concluded an increasingly rambunctious four years of partying at SU, and it sounded like it'd be interesting to read someone else's accounts of and insights into the same drunken stumbles I made countless times across campus hill. The real impact of the book set in when I realized how much it resonates with my own experiences, and how relevant it is because of that. Granted I'm a guy, was not in the greek system, have not been date-raped, and have not come anywhere near the levels of excess Zailckas describes. Even so, almost every episode she recounts runs in parallel with at least one or two of my own experiences, and judging by how commonplace the sight of un-hinged drunken students is at any college campus, I'm sure that this book could act as a near biography for a lot of people other than the author. I read some critics who complained that this story didn't need to be written, since everyone knows that college kids drink, or since Koren Zailckas wasn't even in the running for "worst college drunkard" (I wondered if she would mention the frat boys who fought each other with billiards balls in socks my freshman/her senior year at SU, or the countless sirens every weekend as the paramedics pulled up to the latest case of alcohol poisoning). I kind of think that's what makes it so worthwhile though. Here is this universal american college experience that we all uncomfortably relate to, laid out for us to examine a bit more objectively than we could from any other perspective. We aren't meant to "feel sorry" for her, as so many reviewers appear to think. This is not some sappy, teary-eyed Reader's Digest nonsense, it is a critique of the easily accessible social binge-drinking scene, and she is using her own experiences, which she describes numerous time as not being unique, to theorize about the deeper aspects of the issue. I wasn't shocked or surprised by anything I read in "Smashed", that's not really the point. Ms Zailckas does a good job at digging deeply into every sequence of events, pulling out the painful facts of the matter that everybody knows but won't say, and thus cause one to cringe when they are explicitly put into words. It's easy to say stuff like "college is all about drinking, what else is new" but when the experience is presented this way you are forced to come to grips with it and think about it in a more introspective way. I kept thinking of Tom Wolfe's last novel "I Am Charlotte Simmons", which was an exposé of sorts of the modern college experience. Tom Wolfe had a few fundamental flaws that undermined his entire novel however, whereas Koren Zailckas is able to nail the subject matter. Tom Wolfe failed primarily because he was attempting to write from, about, and to a generation that was removed from him by about fifty years. No matter how accurate his information was, any relevant commentary was neutralized by the fact that he, personally, had no grasp on what he was tal

sharp, painful, touching

I found this book painful to read, on account of seeing myself in the author on every page. I congratulate her on cutting out old habits, however for now, I feel I find greater solace in the taste of cheap vodka. It's an absolutely brilliant book that almost moved me, and I should imagine, achieved in moving others to do something about the things we see in ourselves which make us sick to the stomach.

The Truth

Koren is eloquent in her writing. This book serializes the brutal, but honest truth of teenage and college drinking. It illustrates just how caustic alcohol can be to the youth of today. It is a must read for anyone struggling with an alcohol problem within themselves or someone they know. A very creative and thought provoking book worth its weight in gold, to say the least . . .

Truly amazing

Smashed was an amazing book. it should be on the required reading list for many teens and young women. Alchoholism is becoming a bigger and bigger issue with young people today, and i believe it would be beneficial for many people to read, even just to give them a heads up about the reality of alchohol, or even help them to realize their own problem. Smashed opens the doors of a truly amazing mind, and at the same time a former alchoholic, this just goes to show that nobody is perfect, but by confronting your problem you not only help yourself, but others facing the same conflicts.

Good writing, frightening subject

This is a well-written, seriously scary book that will likely have many readers cringing when they read about the problems alcohol led to for Zailckas. As someone with a young daughter, I found it to be both a cautionary tale and an engrossing memoir. For anyone who has an alcoholic or binge drinker in their family, you'll be able to relate on some level. For me, it was interesting to hear about the experience from the perspective of a young woman. The author writes lucidly and poetically about her past, showing the effects of her lifestyle without ever trying to invoke pity for anything that happened to her in the past. It makes one wonder how common her story, or at least certain elements of it, are to many young women. Although the material is often heavy and depressing, this one will keep your attention. A terrific and frightening account.