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Title: Chimney Rock by Charlie Smith ISBN: 0-8050-2244-9 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: April, 1993 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.50

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Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: The beauty in all things terrible
Comment: Charlie Smith is a master wordsmith. With mere words on a page, he is able to do what so many other respected, talented, and successful writers are unable to do: teleport you not just into another place filled with other people, but into an idea. Fifty percent of any Smith book is theme. Just as we spend so much of our day feeling things abstractly, taking in smells that conjure up long lost memories, and existing in what feels sometimes like a void; Charlie Smith unleashes this part of his characters. Will Blake is a Hollywood actor birthing himself out of his existential crisis and can see and finally accept, distantly, the beautiful in the terrible. The end result is sweet, dark, scary, and insightful. I found myself rereading passages just because I wanted to. I began to dream about the people and the cities and the colors of all the flowers that populate Chimney Rock. Its the kind of book that reveals the true power of a gifted writer.

On the other hand, Charlie Smith is not for everyone. Inexperienced readers need not apply. If a good yarn is all your after, have a friend tell you the story. Charlie's prose is difficult. His sentences are long and crooked. They sometimes form into chains that lead to dramatically different places than they began. A man may walk into a restaraunt and say hello to a woman, but her response could occur three pages later with this type of writing. Its lyrical but indirect. Or, direct spiritually, but not narratively. Nonetheless, its the difficult roads that lead to the grandest rewards.

Rating: 2
Summary: poetic but excessive
Comment: I have not read any of Charlie Smith's other work, so I can't compare this to previous efforts. His writing is poetic, and truly impressive in short bursts. But over the long haul, the poetry interferes with the prose. Words and phrases seem to be chosen more for their sounds and rhythms than for their contributions to plot, and dialogue can be stilted. Imagery is vivid but occasionally self-indulgent. The storyline is interesting at first but eventually grows gaudy and distasteful. The power of Smith's language is his greatest strength, but it is a strength better suited to poetry than novels.