Published August 2018 by Jacana/MF Books
Desirée-Anne Martin is a force. For recovery. For self-love. For hope. Witness the last three sentences of her book – in the Acknowledgements: “And to all the hurt little – and grown-up – girls, this story is for you. There is always hope. Always.” But don’t be fooled. This is not a sweetness and light story. Precious few fairies appear in it. In fact you need to hang on tight for a rof-and-ready roller-coaster ride of note. And this, by the by, despite a comfortably middle-class and lacking-for-little background, as the chapter entitled “Don’t swim after eating” implies. That stopped me in my tracks: my own mother used those very same words on many an occasion. But the swimming-pool-in-the-back-garden social veneer, it turns out, is very thin.
Here, as evidence, is the structure - deceptively ordered at first, except for perhaps a hint of trouble in the middle... Part 1. The Rules. Part 2: Breaking the Rules. Part 3: Fuck the Rules. Part 4: The New Rules. Part 5: Bending the Rules. As you can tell, Ms Martin is not one for rules… Nevertheless, each chapter is carefully named and the typefaces used in the book are elegant; but then there’s that dystopic cover… and that less-than-romantic byline: “A girl who searched for love but found destruction instead.” Not exactly Mills & Boon then.
Like I say, few silver linings. And so, along the way, the language pulls no punches; the shattering descent into addiction is graphically described. Immediate, visceral, utterly believable, she paints a dark picture of a deeply unstable, tortured life of multiple addictions. But then, somehow, miraculously, she survives.
You will be relieved to know, there is some – though not much – dark humour as well, as her back cover bio hints: “A recovering addict, she believes caffeine, cigarettes, chocolate and bacon are the four major food groups.”
Hang in there for that humour – it saves this memoir from being unrelentingly brutal and hopeless and allows, finally, as the LRC's Dawn Garisch describes it, for this lovely summary: “Desiree-Anne Martin has spun the straw of addiction into gold.” Bearing in mind how tight a hold drugs and addiction have on South African lives, we really need these flashes of gold, those “true words that will, somehow, begin to heal that which has been broken.” Between the covers of “We Don’t Talk About It. Ever.” you will find those true words. Go read them.