In trying to explain American's fascination with stories of recovery, a friend recently remarked:

	"PARADISE" By A.L. Kennedy Knopf ($25)

"Americans like the saved; they're not so fond of the drowned."

Understandably then, the conventions of narrative fiction make us expect that stories will progress to some sort of resolution.

The story in A.L. Kennedy's disturbing new novel starts off so bleakly that the assumption is that Hannah Luckcraft, the protagonist, will recovery from her alcoholism. That doesn't happen.

I don't imagine this book being embraced by reading clubs who want a bit of uplift with their literature. Hannah is an ex-cardboard saleswoman drinking herself to death.

Awash with the pleasures and harm that alcohol brings, she shows no motivation to change and accepts the fact that she needs a great deal of whiskey to make it through her life.

The hope on her horizon is not that she'll give up liquor -- recovery doesn't actually come into consideration -- but rather that she'll hoard enough booze.

Kennedy, the author of three story collections, four novels and two works of nonfiction, was named by Granta as one of the 20 "Best Young British Novelists."

She is a bold writer who renders the claustrophobic sufferings of addiction and despair with an acerbic, wry wit:

"I make a small glass of Cointreau with milk, which is both a fruity bracer and a light breakfast, as long as you get it down before it curdles. The initial dose is faintly shocking -- but you'll trample a toddler to get the next."

Hannah thanks God for rectangular whiskey bottles, which are less likely to roll and break, and feels virtuous for pouring her drink into a glass even when alone in a hotel room.

She dates Robert, a dental technician and fellow drunk, who rants about dental hygiene when in his cups.

Hannah misplaces days. She believes these moments of lost time are good for the soul, otherwise there would be too much pain. She understands the damage she causes others but feels resentment rather than empathy for those who are hurt by her drinking.

Her brother, Simon, compares her to a species of lab mice:

"They're bred to be addicted. ... The way they need alcohol buries every other instinct."

Hannah is a woman with strict a social code that helps guide her chores: "Three morning cans of lager = embarrassment. Three morning cans with an added box of matches = shopping."

And though she recognizes that her act is despicable, she sees no alternative and represses any guilt when she swindles an old man suffering alcohol-induced dementia so that she can escape rehab.

The story staggers from one binge to the next; some people ignore every lifesaver thrown their way and slip deeper into the abyss.

The idea of deliberately choosing this darkness is what makes Kennedy's book so different from the typical addict's tale. Hannah refuses redemption.

Her struggle doesn't make alcoholism the least bit attractive, but Kennedy's honesty showcases an original talent.

The truth is that life is a series of small quotidian struggles, and they get tiring. In "Paradise," Kennedy acknowledges a dark truth that lurks beyond the most optimistic 12-step parable:

There are those of us who want to go to Tahiti and paint, and there are those of us who want to find a message in a bottle.