Holy Smoke Review

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(More customer reviews)Dario Trengoni and his childhood pal Antonio Polsinelli meet for the first time in years and discuss what each is doing and what is happening with some of their mutual friends from growing up Italian in South Paris. Dario insists "Anto" speaks the real language, Italian better than he so he asks a favor. Anto reluctantly agrees to writes a love letter for Dario to Madame Raphaelle ironically in French.
Not long after their encounter, someone shoots Dario in the head. Tonio as he known now is stunned to learn he inherited an Italian vineyard near Naples from Dario. He also finds out that his friend was a Taxi-boy earning his money as a gigolo. Tonio tries to locate Madame Raphaelle, but that proves a bit dangerous. So instead he travels to his new property only to find the wine stinks, the vines are worse, the locals already hate him, and a religious scam is in place. With the inheritance comes the Mafia and the Vatican, two of the toughest mobs in Europe, who expect Tonio to give each of them a 100 percent tithe.
HOLY SMOKE! This tale is a terrific twisted look at crime from the perspective of a small timer who is being squeezed by organized groups who want the whole action. Tonio is fabulous as a minnow suddenly swimming with sharks. Fans will appreciate his distinction between the two outside "mobs". The story line satirizes criminal behavior (a crime is defined by the state) to include organized religion as a subcategory of crime. Tonino Benacquista provides a delightfully droll dark thriller.
Harriet Klausner


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"Boisterous black comedy . . . funny and goodhearted, with much incident and expert enthusiasm for sex, food and drink."—The Literary Review

"Much to enjoy in the clash of cultures and superstitions, even a tasty recipe for poisoning your friends with pasta. Detail like this places European crime writing on a par with its American counterpart."—Belfast Independent

Some favors simply cannot be refused. Tonio agrees to write a love letter for Dario, a low-rent Paris gigolo. When Dario is murdered, a single bullet to the head, Tonio finds he has been left a small vineyard near Naples. The wine is undrinkable, but an elaborate scam has been set up. The smell of easy money attracts the unwanted attentions of the Mafia and the Vatican and the unbridled hatred of the locals. Mafiosi aren't choir boys, and monsignors can be very much like Mafiosi.

Winner of three mystery prizes in one year, including the Grand Prix de la Littérature Policière and the Prix Mystère de la Critique.

Tonino Benacquista, born in France of Italian immigrants, dropped out of film studies to finance his writing career. After being in turn a museum watchman, a train guard on the Paris-Rome line and a professional parasite on the Paris cocktail circuit, he is now a highly successful author of fiction and film scripts.

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Moth Smoke. Mohsin Hamid Review

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(More customer reviews)As those of us in the West grope towards some understanding of the turbulence in the Islamic world, it
is only natural that, along with the histories and the political analyses, we turn to literature. Mohsin
Hamid's Moth Smoke, set in Lahore, Pakistan in the summer of 1998, as India and Pakistan rattled
their nuclear sabers, offers a very readable entree to some of the issues surrounding the awkward
process of modernizing one Moslem nation. In particular, it captures the frustration and anger of the
less fortunate in a country whose ruling class is thoroughly corrupt and where the economic divide is
so vast that the wealthy can insulate themselves from the rules that bind the rest of society, and can
nearly avoid physical contact with the lower classes. But it also conveys some sense of the visceral
pride felt at every level of society when the government demonstrated that--just as the Christians, Jews,
Orthodox, Buddhists, and Hindus--Moslems have the bomb too. This tension, of income inequalities
dividing the nation, while ethno-religious pride unites it, is currently a defining characteristic of the
region.
Set against this exotic backdrop of nuclear confrontation and a miasma of corruption, cronyism, and
kickbacks, Hamid unfolds an oddly familiar tale that's equal parts hard-boiled fiction and
yuppie-descent-into-drugs-and-alcohol : the debts to Jay McInerney and James M. Cain are equally
heavy. Darashikoh "Daru" Shezad is a young banker who grew up on the fringes of high society, but
whose lack of connections has ultimately brought him up against a glass ceiling. Of course, his
increasing predilection for booze and dope hasn't helped matters any; and when he tells off an
important client, the bank fires him. Meanwhile, his more fortunate, because better connected,
childhood friend, Aurangzeb "Ozi" Shah, has just returned to Pakistan from the States, with his lovely
wife, Mumtaz, and toddler son, Muazzam. At first joyfully reunited, the old friends are soon pushed
apart again, first by Daru's declining social circumstances, then by a horrific instance of Ozi's
immunity from justice, and finally by the attraction that develops between Daru and Mumtaz.
The title of the book refers to what remains when the moth is seduced by the candle flame, but it's also
a metaphor for Daru spiraling towards his own destruction, drawn by the allure of sex and drugs and
easy money. What makes the novel particularly appealing is that we feel right at home within this
comforting structure of genre, but are simultaneously dazzled by glimpses into an utterly alien culture.
Thus, a story we've heard a hundred times before comes across as somehow fresh and surprising.
First time novelist Mohsin Hamid actually grew up in Lahore, then attended Princeton and Harvard
Law, and now works in Manhattan. His familiarity with the very different cultures of America and
Pakistan makes him an excellent guide for Western readers. It's hard to imagine a more accessible and
enjoyable, though fatalistic, novel if you are looking to literature as a way to start exploring the issues
confronting the nation states of the Islamic world.
GRADE : A

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Tree of Smoke: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)I was very disappointed. I'd read Angels years ago and had wanted to get back to Johnson. My qualms are not with the writing--Johnson is a gifted stylist and you must be careful not to gloss over certain passages or paragraphs which are dense philosophical insights wrapped in great prose and at times poetry. Nor with the politics--those dismissing the book for its lack of aviation verisimilitude or because it wasn't as good a Vietnam book as some others, are evaluating an apple as an orange.
My disappointment is with the characters and the plot. This is at heart an intellectual work: it ruminates and dazzles, but the characters remain distant and abstract, and each time I became caught up in a subplot, it would be discarded. It was a novel that made me think--but I also wanted to feel.
Skip Sands is the fulcrum around which the novel moves, but I never was able to fully grasp his character--or care about him. And, while he thinks a lot, he doesn't do very much.
Take my review, however, with a grain of salt. I've seen some reviewers refer to Tolstoy, and I have to admit, I felt the same way about Sands as I did about Pierre in War and Peace.

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