Smashed (2005) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

• Koren Zailckas: Even if you're a male, it's easy to relate to Koren's vivid description of the labyrinth of drunken social life. She is a sensitive, angry, injured young person who struggles to deal with the pain of blooming adulthood. Of course, she does what most young Americans do: she drinks. The most frightening thing about her is that she is not at all unique in this respect. There are millions out there, just like her. The fundamental question she poses is: How many of you can admit it?
• Natalie: Add a description of this character.
• Chris
• Vanessa
• Billie
• Wendi
• Hannah
• Milton
• Matt
• Greg
• Zeta
• Maya
• Margaret
• Jody
• Claire
• Allen
• Perry
• Phil
• Roxanne
• Wally
• Joe
• Abby
• Josh
• Tess
• Reed

Quotes edit see section history

• “Later, friends will tell me that I wobbled up to them repeatedly to say, "Please rescue me" or "Please make him leave me alone." But they also say that the moment he scuttled up behind me and caught me around the waist, I collapsed in his arms and seemed more than content to let him kiss me. I never had a chance. Even my girlfriends, God love them, thought like date rapists. They thought I said no and meant yes.”

  Koren

• “And I wish I could preserve that feeling for them, capture them, too, in a mason jar and bring them home aglow.”

• “It will not be enough to want once. I will want to want a million times over, to feel this warmth where there used to be coldness, this prickling sensation where everything was once numb.”

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• It’s meant I will act like less of an asshole, but feel much more like one.

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• Being male is not a mess of contradictions, the way being female is. It is not trying to resolve how to be both desirable and smart, soft and sturdy, emotional and capable.

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• In many ways, a glass in your hand is an outward expression of pain. It will take me a good number of years to realize it, but drinking is a visible sign to the world that you’re hurting,

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• ALCOHOL IS a manipulative bitch. If she was a person, I think she’d be a telemarketer or a used-car saleswoman, the type of woman who could persuade you to do just about anything.

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• Privately, I feel disfigured. I am ashamed of my gnarled soul, which is something no surgeon can correct. Were my inner workings exposed, I feel certain they would make children stare, and adults avert their eyes.

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• People with substance-abuse issues like to think that changing physical states is the equivalent of changing emotional states. We like to think that removing ourselves from the craziness of the city, the suburbs, the house, the workplace, the campus, will remove the craziness from us, too.

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• As a gender, we are far more likely to turn our drunken destructiveness inward, to wage private wars against ourselves, to attempt suicide, to be pinned down by fear and depression.

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• But in college, we can wear our alcohol abuse as proudly as our university sweatshirts; the two concepts are virtually synonymous.

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• the best way to curb your drinking is to follow through with the promises you make when you’re drunk.

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• In the end, I quit drinking because I didn’t want to waste any more time picking up the pieces. I decided smashed, when it’s used as a synonym for drunk, is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• New York
• Ocean City
• Syracuse
• S.u.
• Iran
• Malibu
• Manhattan

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Koren Zailckas (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 616.861092

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Add a note to help parents select a book for a child.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Nonfiction › Social Sciences › Sociology
• Books › Biographies & Memoirs › Specific Groups › Women
• Books › Health, Mind & Body › Recovery › Alcoholism
• Books › Nonfiction › Women's Studies
• Books › Biographies & Memoirs › Memoirs

More Books Like This edit see section history