Ellen Hopkins

GLASS

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About the Book

Crank. Glass. Ice. Crystal. Whatever you call it, it’s all the same: a monster. Kristina thinks she can control it. Now with a baby to care for, she is determined to be the one deciding when and how much, the one calling the shots. But the monster is strong, and before she knows it, Kristina is back in its grip…and it won’t let go.

 

The sequel to Crank, this is the continuing story of Kristina and her descent back to hell.

BOOK EXCERPT

Walking with the Monster

You Know My Story

Life

was radical

right after I met

the monster.

Later, life

became

 

harder,

complicated.

Ultimately,

a living

hell,

like swimming

against a riptide,

walking

the wrong

direction in the fast

lane of the freeway,

waking

from sweetest

dreams to find yourself

in the middle of a

nightmare.

Don’t you? All about

my dive

into the lair of the monster

drug some people call crank.

Crystal. Tina. Ice.

How a summer visit

to my dad sent me

into

the arms of a boy — a

hot-bodied hunk, my

very first love, who led

me down the path to

insanity.

How I came home

no longer

Kristina Georgia

Snow, gifted high

school junior, total

dweeb, and

perfect

daughter, but

instead a stranger

who called herself Bree.

 

How, no matter

how hard

Kristina

fought her, Bree

was stronger, brighter,

better equipped to deal

with a world where

everythingmoved at light

speed, everyone mired

in ego. Where “everyday”

became

another word

for making love with

the monster.

Review for GLAss

review from Publishers Weekly:

 

Hopkins’s hard-hitting free-verse novel, a sequel, picks up where Crankleft off. Kristina now lives in her mother’s Reno home with her baby, but constantly dreams of “getting/ high. Strung. Getting/ out of this deep well/ of monotony I’m/ slowly drowning in.” When her former connection turns her on to “glass”: “Mexican meth, as/ good as it comes. maybe 90 percent pure,” Kristina quickly loses control again. She gets kicked out of her house after her baby gets hurt on her watch, starts dealing for the Mexican Mafia (“No problem. I’ll play straight/ with them. Cash and carry”) and eventually even robs her mother’s house with her equally addicted boyfriend. The author expertly relays both plot points and drug facts through verse, painting Kristina’s self-narrated self-destruction through clean verses (“My face is hollow-/cheeked, spiced with sores”). She again experiments with form, sometimes writing two parallel poems that can be read together or separately (sometimes these experiments seem a bit cloying, as in “Santa Is Coming,” a concrete poem in the shape of a Christmas tree). But in the end, readers will be amazed at how quickly they work their way through this thick book-and by how much they learn about crystal meth and the toll it takes, both on addicts and their families. Ages 14-up. (Aug.)