 Life from the addict's point of view gets no realer
than this!, April 27, 2008From
the church house to the crack house, Mari Walker's debut novel is the classic
tale of "a good girl gone bad". The cover makes the book look like a love story,
but that's not the case. The reader follows the main character, Samai Collins,
as she gets drafted into the crack epidemic of the mid- to late-eighties.
Samai weds a minister of questionable values in her early twenties. She
soon finds herself separated after six years of marriage, struggling to make
sense of what went wrong and how to deal with her tenacious need for intimacy.
The most important thing that Samai must do is find a job to financially support
her three children.
A church member suggests seeking a job in the
hardware store where he is employed. She gets the job, and her schedule includes
long hours. Worst of all, she is required to work Sundays, thereby missing the
one thing that has been keeping her stable - going to church. While at work
Samai has a chance encounter with Zane, a person she had a high school crush on.
He was bad in high school, and he's worse now. Samai catches Zane at a time
where he is an occassional cocaine sniffer and not yet a hopeless junkie.
Although Samai and Zane are only separated from their spouses, Zane
manages to convince Samai not only into adulterous sex but also drug use.
Everything is telling Samai to leave Zane alone: the weird dreams, the fact that
her two little boys blatantly dislike Zane, the fact that her involvement with
Zane breaches the Christian values which are the foundation of her spiritual
existence.
Curiosity develops into the utter destruction. What starts as
a "bump" of cocaine with Zane turns into freebasing cocaine and naturally
progresses into an unshakable crack habit. Samai gets her divorce, loses jobs
left and right eventually winding up on public assistance.
"Never As
Good As The First Time" is so interesting because it shows exactly how that
relative, that friend, that business associate can go from heading in the right
direction to crackhead in a few short months. Usually, the junkie is the
nefarious supporting character in most urban lit novels. Author Mari Walker
gives the reader a character that is simultaneously pitiful and despicable.
What did you like best about this book?
This book is about
authentic as it gets when it comes to the story of a person who struggles with
God and crack. Mari Walker skillfully sculpted Samai Collins. As she slips away
from being involved in the church, she quickly becomes enveloped by the culture
that comes along with being addicted to crack. The reader learns as Samai
learns.
Samai's struggles and cravings are so realistic. Who knows that
the steel wool put in the glass stem is called "chore" after a company that
makes steel wool? Who knows that a crack dealer will put the stuff used to sooth
a teething baby's gums on fake rocks to numb a crack-addict's lips and gums when
they test a rock's authenticity? This aspect of the novel is researched on Mari
Walker's part.
If this book was a movie, Zane would win the role of Best
Supporting Actor. He is the gas to Samai's engine. I laughed out loud to one of
his many stories early in the novel. I actually grumbled and put down the book
when he popped back up on the scene after Samai swore off of him. In some ways,
Never Good As The First Time is about Zane's deterioration from a pretty boy
pusher to a run of the mill crackhead as much as it is about Samai's turmoil.
I also liked that fact that the story happened in the late eighties
without hitting the reader over the head with it. References to watching Luther
Vandross perform, saying "that's the bomb!", going to see Spike Lee's School
Daze at the movies were sprinkled throughout "Never As Good As The First Time"
just enough to frame a story about the arrival of crack.
What did you
dislike about this book?
I didn't like the way this book ended. The last
twenty pages didn't flow like the previous two hundred seventy. Too much action.
I thought this story should have stuck with dealing with the issues of leaving
behind crack for family instead of turning in an action packed adventure.
How can the author improve this book?
Besides the surprise
ending, the book can be condensed. "Never As Good As The First Time" is almost
three hundred pages. A couple of smoke sessions could have been left out and the
theme would still be intact.
Joey Pinkney
Unbiased Book Reviewer
UrbanBookSource.com
JoeyPinkney.com
|
Sea of Darkness, 
I Absolutely LOVED
