Nicotine by Gregor Hens

Nicotine. A highly appropriate work to review this time of year, when self-imposed abstinence casts its cloud over the chaste post-Christmas period.

Gregor Hens has felt the pain of abstinence many times, through multiple attempts to quit smoking. The writhing, sweating and craving, followed by the joyful indulgence of that first illicit cigarette, guaranteed to vindicate any suffering. Hens endured and he wrote about it, resulting in this excellent personal work on the fetishisation, the ceremony and the compulsions of the smoker.

Nicotine is a meandering journey through a life of everyday addiction, soaked in memories stained sepia by tobacco smoke. Hens touches upon theories for his addiction. Freud is only the first psychoanalytical deconstruction on the path to understanding his obsession – remembering his beautiful mother, cigarette in hand, literally passing the habit to him; his smoke breathing tyrant father, later to embody severe renunciation.

The writing is superb, an unclassifiable mix of freeform thought and transcribed memory, reminiscent of the wonderful essayist Geoff Dyer. Its malleable structure, through sheer skill and confidence, allow the many digressions to remain ever valid and precise. The reader becomes therapist, reflecting upon Hens’ reflections, a sounding board in a process which the writer seemingly seeks to learn from. In that respect it is highly self-indulgent, and yes, self-serving. Yet, it's so insightful and honest that we never feel as if smoke is being blown in our eyes, or up anywhere else.