A Sad Love Affair

By Daisy Maryles -- Publishers Weekly, 2/21/2005

A subject that's garnering media exposure of a different stripe is teen drinking, the focus of another new arrival on our nonfiction list. Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood is Koren Zailckas's chronicle of her love affair with booze that began at the age of 13 and continued with a vengeance through high school and college. It's interesting to note that Zailckas attended Syracuse University, which was the subject of an April 2002 Time cover story about young women and binge drinking. (Additionally, this is one of the books being featured in PW's February 28 parenting category closeup, in a sidebar titled "The Teen Challenge.") PW's starred review called Zailckas's book "deeply moving, written in poetic, nuanced prose that never obscures the dangerous truths she seeks to reveal." A pub date (February 7) interview on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 kicked off Viking's promotional campaign, followed on February 9 by a Good Morning America interview with Charlie Gibson, Zailckas, her mother and her sister. The author's five-city tour wraps up tomorrow with a signing at Barnes & Noble's Boston University store. Copies in print: 75,000 after four trips back to press.