peteg's blog - noise - books - 2013 06 01 MohsinHamid MothSmoke

Mohsin Hamid: Moth Smoke

Sat, Jun 01, 2013./noise/books | Link

This is Hamid's first novel. The opening trial structure a bit weird and ultimately merely parenthetic. The accounts of the "witnesses" are less fully realised than Daru's strong voice. There is a limp twist at the end. The structure is the same as his other two: boy-meets-girl amongst calamity (here the 1998 Pakistani nuclear tests). I liked the heroin-laced aitches, replacing the stoner's jays. The worst of the three but still not bad.