Holy Smoke

by Fanny Howe

A woman travels among geographies both real and imagined looking for her daughter.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Literature

116 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Fanny Quincy Howe was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. She was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Howe wrote more than 20 books of poetry and prose. Her major works include poetry such as One Crossed Out, Gone, and Second Childhood; the novels Nod, The Deep North, and Indivisible; and collected essays such as The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life and The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation.
Howe received praise and official recognition: she was awarded the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize by the Poetry Foundation. She also received the Gold Medal for Poetry from the Commonwealth Club of California. In addition, her Selected Poems received the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets for the most outstanding book of poetry published in 2000. She was a finalist for the 2015 International Booker Prize. She also received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Poetry Foundation, the California Arts Council, and the Village Voice. She was professor of writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tersely fragmented experimental political thriller from the disillusioned wreckage of 60s radicalism, roving from Cuba to the NYC underground, to the wilds of Canada. This is a novel about what is left after ideals collapse and one is left to sort out a life amidst the nagging memory of past hopes. Recast, of course, as an adventure road novel in search of a lost daughter. Its disintegrating form makes it hard, thematically, to hang onto by the end, but that's precisely why I already feel that I need to re-read it. As a long-vanished Fiction Collective publication of 1979, this just renews my assurance that that whole catalog is worth running down.

[Yigru Zeltil · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel-in-verse (or almost) by one of the writers associated with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. And indeed, there's something poetic about this, but it is also a novel of suspense in the same time (as what we read is actually the notebook of the main character, who transcribes dialogues and digresses about various thing - she especially reports her "visions" of the Virgin Mary) - a mixture that, I think, one could hardly pull off with mainstream success now, long after the heydays of "postmodernism" (or the idea of it) -- but this was published in 1979. Too lazy right now to write more about this, but it is definitely an enjoyable AND innovative book (did I forgot to mention the "illustrations" that seem at first random, but prove to be part-and-parcel of the book?).

[Eric Cecil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pangs of Joy Williams, Ann Quin and Rudolph Wurlitzer.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

fanny howe’s novels are criminally underrated

[LM · Rating 4 out of 5]

“A wet Saturday, drenching rain, grey & warm, seems like spring, causes people to do weird things, like buy lipstick or go insane.”

Aaaa love literatuur waar taalspel én politieke radicaliteit samenkomen! Holy smoke!!

[Steve Shilstone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Far out, man. Play it loud and soft or not.