Tree of Smoke
Tree of Smoke is a 2007 novel by American author Denis Johnson which won the National Book Award for fiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.[1][2] It is about a man named Skip Sands who joins the CIA in 1965, and begins working in Vietnam during the American involvement there. The time frame of the novel is from 1963 to 1970, with a coda set in 1983. One of the protagonists of Tree of Smoke is Bill Houston, who was the main character in Johnson's debut novel Angels, published in 1983.
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[edit] Plot
Johnson's novel follows eight different characters: CIA agent Skip Sands; Canadian Red Cross worker Kathy Jones; Jimmy Storm, a sergeant and henchman of Colonel Francis Sands; the brothers Bill and James Houston; a South Vietnamese fighter pilot named Minh; Father Carignan, a priest working in the Philippines; and a German assassin named Dietrich Fest.
[edit] Critical reception
Reviews of the book have been mostly favorable. Tree of Smoke was swiftly cited as one of the Best Books of 2007 by The New York Times, whose reviewer, Jim Lewis, called the book "a massive thing and something like a masterpiece".[3] Time magazine's Lev Grossman named it one of the Top 10 Fiction Books of 2007, ranking it at #5. Grossman praised the book as "the most ambitious novel of the year, and one of the greatest."[4][5]
There are several references in the novel to the title phrase, which has Biblical origins in three cited passages: Song of Solomon 3:6; Book of Joel 2:30, 31; and Exodus 33:9, 10.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ "National Book Foundation". http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2007_f_johnson.html. Retrieved 2006-04-30.
- ^ Thompson, Bob (2007-11-15). Johnson's 'Tree of Smoke' Wins National Book Award. Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/14/AR2007111402806.html. Retrieved 2007-11-15
- ^ New York Times Sept. 2, 2007
- ^ Grossman, Lev; "The 10 Best Fiction Books"; Time magazine; December 24, 2007; Pages 44–45.
- ^ Grossman, Lev; Top 10 Fiction Books; time.com
[edit] External links
- "The Revelator", by Jim Lewis, The New York Times Book Review, September 2, 2007.
- "A Bright Shining Lie", by B. R. Myers, The Atlantic, December 2007.
- Slate magazine Book Club Podcast. Critics Meghan O'Rourke, Katie Roiphe, and James Surowiecki discuss the novel Tree of Smoke.
