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Poems About Drug Addiction

Helon Habila's Love Poems, the opening tale in Waiting for an Angel (Penguin I Books, [pounds sterling]12.99), won the 2001 Caine Prize for African Literature. In this first novel, a powerful collection of interlinked stories about life under military rule in Nigeria during the 1990s, 34-year-old Habila reveals a voice of deep experience.

The writers and journalists, Lomba, Kela and Joshua, at the novel's centre, are activists in the spirit of Ken Saro-Wiwa (hanged in 1995 for daring to speak out against Sani Abacha). Habila invests these remarkably real characters with compassion, fear, humour and love. They are driven by powerful moral convictions, undeterred by the inevitable consequences of their actions -- jail, beatings, humiliation and the destruction of all they own. They know that their dreams of change are hopeless: "something always contrives to turn them into a nightmare".

Habila somehow creates an appealing world amid the brutality. The inhabitants of "Poverty Street" fall in love to the sounds of Marvin Gaye, hanging out drinking coke and shyly plucking up the courage to kiss, like teenagers everywhere. Habila welcomes the reader into this foreign culture, inviting us to dine with the families, sharing their fears and pleasures, passions and aspirations.

One of the most effective passages in the book concerns the one-legged, self-prophesised street hero, "Brother", whose sense of worth is rocked by Kela's auntie. Tired of his tales, she pours a bowl of soup over his head: "I was haunted by the infinitely sad expression on his face...the theme of sadness emblazoned on every inch of skin, every wrinkle, every hair on his face ... a tragic mask." This is a very sad, disturbing novel. Habila's future, at least, looks bright.

In Damien Wilkins's Chemistry (Granta Books, [pounds sterling]10), a bleak tale of drug addiction in New Zealand, the unhappiness comes from inside the home. The chemistry linking the Webb family is drugs in some form or other: the elder brother, Don, is a pharmacist; his sister, Penny, slaves as an alcoholic GP; their lonely mother swigs homeopathic remedies all day; and the youngest sibling, Jamie, is simply a junkie.

Members of this routinely dysfunctional family have plodded along during Jamie's 20-year absence by performing perfunctory kindnesses to each other. Don cleans his mother's swimming pool each week, a job he hates, simply to avoid having to speak to her. Jamie's prodigal return sparks a dramatic series of events, starting with an excruciating scene where the family is reunited, leading to methadone abusers blackmailing Don (who foolishly does a "Hugh Grant" in the storeroom) and, ultimately, murder.

Wilkins captures life in small-town New Zealand well -- a world of jealousies, scandals and suffocating boredom. Among this miserable brood, Jamie, oblivious in his narcotic haze, is perhaps the happiest -- his biggest problem is locating the television' remote control. Although unrepentantly gloomy, a dark, addictive humour pervades this novel of doomed domesticity.

Also located in far-flung regions, Tokyo Station (Macmillan, [pounds sterling]16.99), the new thriller from Martin Cruz Smith (of Gorky Park fame), follows the adventures of Harry Niles, a gaijin son of US missionaries left to run wild in the back streets of Tokyo in the 1920s, while his parents spread the Word of the Lord to an uninterested Japan.

Harry quickly befriends prostitutes, artists and junior gang members, setting him in good stead for an adult life as a bar-owning con man. By 1941, when Japan is preparing to attack Pearl Harbour, Harry is established as one of Tokyo's major players -- albeit a despised figure. But he remains confused about his identity. Is he an all-American patriot, or still the little gaijin who has become as Japanese as a paper lantern?

As war approaches Harry's existence becomes increasingly precarious. He is hunted by the "thought police" who suspect him of antiJapanese behaviour, and pursued by an old-style Samurai whom he humiliated during the JapanChina conflict. On the home front, he is caught between a desire to flee with his ginger-haired, cuddly, western lover or stay put with his dangerous, homicidal, sexy Japanese girlfriend. A difficult enough dilemma, but there are worse ahead.

While avoiding numerous personal assassins, Harry can't escape his own conscience -- should he warn America of his suspicions about Pearl Harbour? Set against a backdrop of nationalistic fervour and pride unimaginable outside Japan (unless you include America), the final chapters are genuinely thrilling. Cruz Smith is a stylish, engaging writer.

COPYRIGHT 2002 New Statesman, Ltd.
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