The Million Rand Teaspoon – Nikki Ridley

The million-rand teaspoon is a true story, told by several narrators, of a young man’s descent into drug addiction, a serious overdose that left him blind and brain-damaged, and his struggle to recover over the next nine years. Written entirely in the first person, Paul Bateman’s story is narrated by him in some chapters, and, in others, by various members of his family, his ex-girlfriend, and a woman who was involved in his protracted but only ever partial recovery. The title is divided into two parts – the first covering Paul’s years of addiction and the second detailing his struggle to regain some kind of life up until the present. The title refers to Paul’s father’s recollection of finding only a teaspoon in his son’s otherwise denuded flat (Paul had sold everything else, but kept the teaspoon to cook up drugs). The spoon came to symbolize for him the years of struggling with Paul’s addiction, and the financial cost of that struggle.