Tree of Smoke

#535
Title: Tree of Smoke
Author: Denis Johnson
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
Year: 2007
620 pages

I agree with reviewers who call this sprawling or confusing, but I thought both of these aspects contributed to a useful chaos and uncertainty that paralleled the war in Vietnam, the landscape traversed, and the clash of world views. The audiobook was infinitely easier than the novel since the speakers were more clearly differentiated. Who's on the level? Are there conspiracies? Did the colonel know what he was doing? Thought these questions are raIsed but not answered, this was nonetheless a satisfying novel.

Papillon

#507
Title: Papillon
Author: Henri Charrière
Translators: June P. Wilson & Walter B. Michaels
Publisher: Perennial
Year: 1970
Country: French Guiana (overseas region of France)
 560 pages

Eh. As long as you understand it's fiction (in the style made famous by A Million Little Pieces) it's interesting enough, though it's picaresque and there's really no developmental self-reflection. There is more insertion into and extraction of objects from the anus than in much pornography. Really, it's enough to make you rethink shaking hands with the guy.

Poor Papillon, who protests his innocence while evincing a startling degree of criminal knowledge and underworld relationships, periodically becomes enraged and spews angry fantasies. Yeah, I'd let him into my house. If you want to see the basis for the movie, read this. If you want to read a prison narrative, there are better, and more true to life.

The Time Traveler's Wife

#349
Title: The Time Traveler's Wife
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Year: 2003
Publisher: Harcourt
556 pages

Audiobook here.

As with all time travel narratives, the structure was an important element, here executed well. The resolutions of  plot points were managed relatively tidily. The middle of the book moved slowly, though it could be argued that it was necessary both for establishing a domestic interval and for developing the theme that love doesn't solve all of the problems experienced by Odysseus afloat on the sea of time.

I did not enjoy the audiobook, which I interspersed with the physical book. The Henry reader sounded jaded, bored, and Humbert Humbert-like.