Review: Smoke

Smoke by Catherine McKenzie
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

I picked up this book because it was recommended by Bruce Holsinger (author of A Burnable Book and The Invention of Fire). Though I thought it strange that he didn't provide any details in his recommendation, only that he liked the book. But since I like his historical fiction books very much and decided to give this one a short anyway.

Contemporary fiction is not something I usually read. This genre is full of mundane and ugly things everyone has enough in real life to bother reading about them. This book is no exception. It's filled with not-so-bright, everyday people that make typical, everyday mistakes, lots of them. Not very exciting.

The only big thing that goes for the book is its structure. It's is set during a wildfire threatening a town, all the action takes six days. And it is literally divided into six partes, each for each day. So when I picked it up and looked through, I wondered if it would enrich my experience to try and read it in six days. And so I tried. I didn't make it exactly in six days, the first day was a bit too long and took me two days to get through. We all have long days from time to time, don't we? :) So I read it in seven days. And I must say it was a nice way to read this book, allows for more immersion.

Overall, it's a solid book with realistic characters, well written, and somewhat interesting. I wouldn't rate it very high, but it was a reasonably good read.

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