Literary Award Winners Fiction Book Club discussion

Please comment here on 'Tree of Smoke' by Dennis Johnson, (2007 National Book Award winner).

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
Irene (Harborcreek, PA)’s review of Tree of Smoke | Goodreads

This was a hard book to read on so many levels. The jumping around in time and between characters was confusing. The vulgarity, misogyny, brutality was tough to read. I suppose it captured something essential of the war in Vietnam, but I did not come away with any insights that might redeem the unpleasant reading experience.

I agree with your comments Irene. This book was an unpleasant read about characters with no moral compass. A realist novel with some memorable, unlikeable characters. I particularly liked the communications between the son in Vietnam and mother in the USA. There were some poignant moments. Overall a worthwhile read but it's not a book I would consider rereading.

My two favourite novels on Vietnam are:
'Matterhorn' by Karl Marlantes, which is about a small group of marines. The battle scenes are particularly vivid.

'The Things They Carried' by Tim O'Brien, a collection of connected short stories about the experiences of being a foot soldier in Vietnam in 1969.

As far as spy novels go, I prefer John Le Carre's 'George Smiley' novels, with 'The Spy Who came in from the Cold' being an all time favourite of mine.

I shy away from novels with vivid depicgtions of violence, whether in war or other contexts. The dehumanizing of the prostitutes forced into the sex trade by poverty was particularly hard to read for me. The book jacket described this as a novel of lonely characters searching for love, a tender novel. That was not how I experienced it.

The women in this novel are treated poorly. The men are lonely, lost souls who don’t seem to know how to lift themselves out of the holes they find themselves in.

I agree that all the characters are lonely to some degree. But I did not find their depiction as tender.

Agreed. Tender is not the right word for this book. My book blurb mainly had descriptions of the spy plot thread.