Drunk is the story of Larry, a young man, in what is supposed to be his prime. Larry loves to drink, and Larry loves women. But Larry has issues, deep seated issues, the biggest of them stemming from having been abandoned by his father, who Larry loathes with a burning passion. Drunk is a story of desolation and despair; a picture of the destruction looming in the crevices of a could’ve-been bright future, and the mysterious ways that human lives, however mundane or exceptional, are ultimately intricately interwoven.
I struggled to decide how I felt about Drunk. I mean, this was raw and gory. We explore drug abuse and the mental health issues that contribute to it, which I love. Also, the author takes us on this journey through the addict’s eyes, which is not a perspective I’ve seen often. Walking with Larry through his decision-making, seeing exactly when he faulters, and the insant instinctively knowing exactly where this decision leads, all make it very real, and though he may not have been exactly relatable to me personally, I could see how Larry would be relatable to many people.
Speaking of relatable and personal, the voice of Drunk is extremely Kenyan, and I live for it. It always makes me happy to feel like a book was written specifically for me… like I fall in the exact target demographic of a piece of work, and that there are Easter eggs in there that I will find but another subset of people will miss. Listen, it’s petty and mean, but I LOVE it.
Source: My Instagram; link in the “connect” sleeve at the top of this site
Also on the relatable thing, Larry’s drinking. If you’re reading this and you’re Kenyan, you know we drink. Like… like wueh. Like Kenyans drink. Half of Kenyan pop culture memes and songs are about drinking (the other half are about Luo men, but that is a story for another day). And it stood out strongly in Larry’s story. The casual drinking that seems light and fun but very easily turns into a problem. The fact that having a drinking problem is very real, especially in the high-pressure, high-demand, low-payoff lives of Kenyan youth. The fact that drinking problems take many shapes and forms, and just because you haven’t yet woken up in a ditch, with soiled clothes and a hazy recollection of recent events, doesn’t mean you are immune. We see Larry go from a high achieving casual social drinker, to a functioning alcoholic, to having his life completely destroyed by his drinking. And the story may sound a tad unrelatable to me, but it did make me pause to think about how easy it is to get from point A to Z, how swift the process, how subtle the steps are until suddenly one is no longer the person they used to be. Fellow Kenyans, when the fun stops, so should you. (This PSA is NOT brought to you by East African Breweries Limited).
On more formal aspects of Drunk, I like that it’s a short story. I respect the ability to pack a punch in a few pages. Short stories are legit one of my favourite art forms. I found it well edited (not much to say about that). I also loved the shifting perspectives; always a favoured stylistic device. The shifting narrators was also hella impressive. It is NOT an easy feat to pull off, but Drunk does it flawlessly. Inhabiting different voices as the narrative flows from first person (Larry) to third person (an omnipresent/omniscient observer) could not have been easy to keep track of while writing this. I think this might be my favourite thing about Drunk, frankly. Such a boss move and I stan!
I mentioned that I am conflicted about my feelings surrounding this read, for a few reasons. The story started out strong and engaging, but I felt like it got a bit fluffy in the middle. The tempo slowed down, and I remember, at several points of reading it, thinking “okay but what’s the point of this?” or “okay, we get the point”. For a short story, the stage was set for quite a long time.
Now my biggest issue with this was the characters. First, none of the other characters was fleshed out, but I guess that’s to be expected from a short story which was about Larry, and wouldn’t have been a problem. But Larry is just so unlikeable! Ugh! Like, I really really didn’t like him. Again, wouldn’t be a problem otherwise. But he is an addict. And this is what bothered me about this book. Larry was already pretty unlikeable before his addiction. Like, he was the kind of douchebag that teenage boys aspire to be. From the summary on the sleeve of the book, “Mad Larry. He drinks. He shags girls. He hates his father.” You get the picture: a city hot shot on a meteoric rise, with no time for basic things like empathy and decency, and a chip on his shoulder causing determination to wreck himself. Tale as old as time. I would have hated him simply, and that would be that, and the author would have just successfully written an unlikeable character, which would’ve been a pro in my books.
But then the addiction angle came into play. And while I get that humans are usually multidimensional and not a clean cut, this new aspect conflicted me, and not in a good way. The Larry that had been built from the start of the book was not a guy I wanted to root for or sympathise with.. But Larry becomes an addict, and I feel manipulated. Almost like now I have to empathise and be kind, even though I only empathise with addiction as a disease and how it affects him and those around him, and not really Larry the city hot shot.
I also think the ending left me wanting more, not necessarily in a “this story shouldn’t end” type of way, but more in a “I want this to have ended differently” type of way. Traditionally, I love cliffhangers, mostly for the torture of trying to think of all the different ways that story went after the curtains fell. But this cliffhanger felt less like an assignment for my imagination and more like an incomplete story. I wanted Larry to have a redemption arc, but not badly enough for me to dwell on it after finishing the book. I felt relief, though, regarding Malkia’s outcome.
Oh, also the mystic connection between Malkia and Larry felt a bit disingenuous to me. I didn’t feel like it fit in with the general tone of Larry’s narrative, which was pretty modern and simple. It was a big “what are the odds? No, really, what are the odds?” moment for me.
Summary: Drunk left me feeling briefly confused, angry and manipulated, then apathetic.
Rating: 3 / 5 (0.5 for the writing style, 2.5 because my opinions on Larry and his story are very strong in both the positive and negative directions)
Recommended to readers who:
- Love Bikozulu’s writing (his writing style is unmistakable, and the unofficial and relatable voice of this is delightful)
- Love stories with a moral conflict, or confusing characters, at their core
- Love short stories
Gowe 
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