Review | Forty Nights by Chris Thrall: second memoir relocates drug-fuelled antics from Hong Kong to Britain
- The British ex-marine describes with warmth and wit his attempts to face his demons in his homeland, with varying degrees of success
- It soon becomes clear that he could not leave his addiction issues behind by leaving Hong Kong
Forty Nights by Chris Thrall, Serf Books/Blacksmith Books, 4/5 stars
At the end of his bestselling 2011 memoir Eating Smoke, Chris Thrall was on the tarmac at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak airport in 1996, about to head back to Britain and attempt to face his drug-fuelled demons. Follow-up Forty Nights picks up where we left him and soon reveals that the first book’s story of personal meltdown and amphetamine psychosis is far from over.
Thrall, a former marine, had moved to Hong Kong in the early 1990s with his own network marketing business selling security products, which promptly collapsed when the products turned out to be faulty. He found himself taking on a series of increasingly questionable jobs, culminating in a security gig at a triad-controlled Wan Chai nightclub. At the same time he was developing a heavy-duty Ice addiction and suffering full-blown delusions. In debt, he eventually had to leave the city.
However, it turned out that Hong Kong wasn’t the problem – it was Thrall’s mental health, which was struggling with unresolved issues from his childhood and his experiences on active service in Northern Ireland. He returns to his parents’ house believing he has his habit under control and will soon be able to return to Hong Kong.
Finding rural England unbearably dull, he insists that nothing is wrong with him despite his family’s concerns and his own unpredictable behaviour. It is not long before he is weaving random objects he finds at his parents’ house into the global conspiracy theory.