The book is basically a biographical story about the crack epidemic in the U.S. in the '80's. The book covers several characters (dealers, users, recovered and relapsed users) in a couple of NY neighbourhoods.
When looking for this book (there are two with the same title) I ran across a few reviews. One of which I fully agree with: the characters in the book seem to have it "too easy" in the way they seem to have little remorse for the terrible things they have done, and have experienced. For example, in one scene, the main dealer's girlfriend has been stealing crack from him and using (secretly). He suspects, and he accosts his intermediate distributors, beating one nearly to death, mainly to see if she'll admit to stealing to save this innocent guy (a lifetime friend). She doesn't, the guy survives and goes to the competition - no remorse, no attempt to explain/payoff/apologize to the innocent party, and no lasting recriminations.
Similarly, the key female character is abused, becomes an addict, is turned into prostitution by her mother's "boyfriend", recovers, has a good relationship/wealth/security, relapses and loses it all. Still, not much in the way of angst.
The book does show the paths that lead to horrendous outcomes (e.g. the move into prostitution to feed addiction) but to some degree normalized this behaviour and, perhaps in order to make the characters likable, avoids some of the responsibility for choices and actions. Though, to be fair, I don't have any experience with these issues, so maybe the only way to survive is to adopt a relatively guilt-free existence to avoid going down even darker and more pessimistic paths.
All in all, I did enjoy the book, but perhaps had too high an expectation for the book to achieve.
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