Apparently this warning has been around for about a
decade, but I first noticed it a few weeks ago while watching a film on Netflix.
Now, every time I read about a character smoking in
a novel, the phrase pops into my head.
Most recently it was when I was reading The Best We
Could Do, an illustrated memoir by Thi Bui. Bui chronicles her family’s escape
from Vietnam in the 70s. After a winter in the Midwest plagued by illness, the
family decides to move to California. As she and her sibling try to adjust to their
new life, their parents continue to work and attend night school. Of her father, "I remembered he smoked a lot." The boxes depicting those afternoons with her father are bisected with somewhat menacing plumes of his cigarette smoke. Her childhood
memories are framed by her experience as a new mom. At the same time, she is
trying to figure out how to relate to her own parents now that she truly feels
she is an adult.
Filaments of smoke also drift through a novel
I picked up on the sale table at this bookstore last week. Amor Towles’ Rule of Civility
is set in the 1930s. Katey Kontent and her roommate Eve strike up a conversation
with a young man they meet in a bar on New Year's Eve. This chance encounter with Tinker Grey
opens a small window into a posher social circle. Through Tinker’s connections, Katey finds work at a fledgling Vanity Fair type magazine and friendship, if
not romance, with Tinker’s friend Wallace. Towles, a master at dialogue (and
setting – be it a hunt club or “quasi-Russian demimonde”), whisks the reader
into the action, leaving her quite breathless.
And not because of the second-hand smoke.
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