Loss Of Innocence In Melvin Burgess's Smack

Candy herself when we first begin the novel is beautiful and full of life. She starts taking heroin and soon it’s all she wants. From there she gets more addicted and soon works in a brothel before moving on to be a street prostitute. At their lowest point the unnamed narrator and Candy are expecting a child however Candy doesn’t stay clean which results in a premature stillbirth. After this more drug use and despair before finally the relationship ends because the characters can’t stay clean together. Candy’s descent is often shown through her diminishing beauty. When the novel begins her energy, passion, and beauty define her and it’s what the narrator is attracted too. Along with her will to live. Heroin ruins this and she becomes a shell. Davies himself described Candy as, “A two dimensional approximation of the narrators desires, obsessions, and his inability to see the truth at any deep level.”(Davies).

Ultimately Candy is a deeper and more devastating look at drug use. While many young adult novels

Smack was a young adult novel about a couple in England who run away and after becoming squatters eventually become addicted to Heroin. This is another fiction novel with a few events and characters from real life. Smack received ma lot of praise however was widely criticized for contributing to a loss of innocence in young adult novels. The novel however received more praise than negative. Melvin Burgess explains on his website, “The approach it takes in being open, honest and upfront about drugs and drug culture is seen as being empowering thing, encouraging people to think for themselves, rather that encouraging them to take drugs, as its critics still sometimes try to make out”. (Burgess). Burgess goes on to explain that in hindsight he realized, “It was just about the first book to deal with the subject of drug culture for people in high school in a straight forward way.”