other words for smoke by sarah maria griffin (2019)
"the most powerful tragedy is the first time one is forgotten, even for a minute."
in my many years of bookselling, i've sold more copies of this book than any other, have given it away in book exchanges with handwritten letters tucked inside, even made a bot that posted lines from it every few hours, bleeding its words into the world. if you've somehow escaped my love for this book, let me tell you about it.
other words for smoke is set in a strange house inhabited by a dwindling coven of irish witches and the two interdimensional beings that stalk its halls and haunt its walls. it's a story about ireland's history of mistreating women. it's a story about the toxicity and unfathomable cost of patriarchal society, and the harrowing lengths that many women must go to in order to survive. it's a coming of age story set in the hazy vulnerability of summer, about the fever dream of one's first queer crush. it's a story about finding where you belong, about embracing the wisdom you gain as you grow older. it's about the tarot, and the story of life written across its cards. perhaps most of all, it's a story about holding onto that which protects you as tightly as you can, to give yourself the means to forge a better future. (it is, as well, a surreal and powerful love letter to twin peaks and it has footnotes. i never stood a chance against its desire to consume my heart.)
sarah has often said that when she writes, she's telling the truth about what it means to be alive, and i can think of no better way to describe other words for smoke. it's a gorgeous and eerie novel in which there are two haunted houses: the one on iona crescent, and you. we are in and of ourselves haunted houses, possessed by the versions of ourselves we have been, will never be, and could possibly be, and somewhere in the entanglement of those beings is the aching, bright truth of what it means to be human. here is that truth put to page, and shaped into one of my favorite books of all time.
go into the house of it, will you? and then, when you're ready, come find me in one of its rooms. tell me everything.
