She’s Gone, the first novel from Ghana-born Jamaican poet and academic Kwame Dawes (he published a book of short stories, A Place to Hide, in 2002), is not a dark tale of violence and drugs and taboo sex (though all three, in different measures, feature in the story), yet it also does not seem to be your garden variety romance. There is, on the face of it, a social conscience at work; as for a happy ending, if there is one, it can’t be said to be conventional.

She's Gone delves into the psychology of desire and need as it contends with issues of culture and class. If it is a love story, it is one marked by the harsh realities of human existence that we see if the most revealing of Bob Marley's love songs, or the cool sensual intelligence of the best of Milan Kundera. Dawes is a poet but he never let's his poetry detract from the sheer pleasure of storytelling.