Customer Reviews

Holy Smoke

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I didn't think "Holy Smoke" would be that good, but I was mistaken. This book is a perfect read for anyone who's interested in light psychology. The book messes with your mind just a little bit, not enough to make you want to put the book down, but enough to make you think about what's going on. The book is sexy (the entire story is based around the sexual encounters between a young woman and her "deprogrammer") and smart, good enough to be in the making for a major motion picture starring Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel. Good enough for me, I would recommend this book to anyone in the mood for a smart, sexy romp in the psychological world of cults.

Being a rabid fan of Kate Winslet, I of course got myself a copy of this in anticipation of the upcoming film version...(I'm also keen on Jane Campion.) Anyway, it's excellent! Dramatic, thought-provoking (spirituality, sexuality, love, this one runs the gamut), with some intriguing characters and motivations...I definitely can't wait for the film now! Kate is sure to be a perfect Ruth...and Harvey Keitel, well, um...he'll do, I suppose. :)

I was first appealed by this book because I'm really a fan of Kate Winslet and I've read all the books that relate to the movies she did (thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure", Esther Freud's "Hideous Kinky" etc...).I also have seen most of Jane Campion's movies so I really wanted to know what the story was all about before confronting the movie (Holy SMOKE is said to open fall 1999) I think that the themes of "Holy Smoke" themselves are thrilling: a prohibited love relationship mingled with the search of spirirituality, all of this set in Australia. This is how the story goes: Ruth, an Australian young woman who fell under the spell of a guru and his cult in India is brought back in her country by her family in hope of deprogramming her. This family, which by the way is more wacko then Ruth , hires PJ Waters (a professional in deprogramming) from New York. All along the book Ruth and PJ develop a strong sexual attirance between each other which ends in a delirious erotic relationship. From this moment we know that this relationship cannot lead to something serious or even to love. I think that that's where this story looses its charm. I know that Anna campion wrote the best part of the book(especially the erotic passages) so it seems to me that we learn more about her than about Ruth and PJ.Moreover it seems that the story's only purpose is to show that PJ and Ruth become slaves of their perversities. However, this book was made as a support, a form of screenplay of the movie, so let's say that the movie will be better than the book (hopefully).

While Ruth is young and lacking in a formal education, she is not unintelligent, and I like the way she figures things out with and without the help of the male expert. Ruth is a strong female character, especially in the erotic scenes in which she initiates sex and sees to her own pleasure (on page 173, for example). HOLY SMOKE is worth reading for the erotic scenes alone.

First, let me get a bias out of the way - I usually like the book better than the movie and I'm usually critical of the movie after having read the book. That said, I'm wondering if preceeding reviewers have read this book and judged it on its own merits. From the sound of it, the author would have been better off to have just written in the name "Harvey" instead of "PJ" and "Kate" instead of "Ruth."

The book isn't horrible but its no literary classic either. It reads more like an expanded screenplay (which seems to be what it is) than a novel. The plot is interesting and the characterization good. But, having had a great amount of experience with dialogue because of their careers in movies, I'm surprised at the quality of dialog in this novel. Frankly, its not great. Ruth's speech is dotted with "blah, blah's" as if the authors just got tired of putting words into her mouth. And PJ uses phrases unique to Australians (and most British) but usually unheard in the United States. It doesn't seem like much of an effort was made to have PJ "sound" American.

Like I said, its not a bad book. Its close relationship to the movie can't be ignored but it deserves to be evaluated on its own. This is not great literature...there's a lot better stuff out there to read than Holy Smoke! but its entertainment.

I actually read the book before I saw the film. I love this story.What I love most is that P.J. and Ruth really did fall in love under some very strange ,unusual,one in a million circumstances.Its not the marriage kind of love but love none the less.

This book is really quite dreadful in that it's quite confusing, seems to have little plot. It reads like the person who wrote it was a little off in the head, more like reading broken personal thoughts than a cohesive novel. Dissapointing because it seems like much could have been done with it if it didn't just seem to lose contact with reality.

Holy Smoke is a confusing effort by the Campion sisters. The novel starts out as an interesting exploration of the relationship between a cult deprogrammer and is unwilling to be swayed client and ends as a wierd obsessive love story.

The client is 20ish Ruth Baron an Australian girl who has fallen under the influence of an Indian guru. The deprogrammer is a slick older American named PJ Waters. The method of therapy is a three day talk session at a remote Outback farmhouse when all beliefs are questioned.

The first 150 pages or so lay out a solid framework exploring the mind sets of both participants fairly well. The last 80 pages or so allow this framework to crumble. What started out so strongly turns into a sexual power game between the two characters which leaves both fragile and damaged.

On the whole this is not great literature but a fairly straight forward story that almost reads like a screenplay for the movie that was released at roughly the same time as its publication. The supporting characters are an interesting lot with the Baron extended family more in need of therapy than the daughter.

This one may be worth a read on a weekend with no big plans but I wouldn't go out of my way to read it.

Holy Smoke tells the dysgraphic tale of a young Australian woman, Ruth, who is "rescued" by her family from an Indian Religious cult, and brought home (by foul means or fair) to undergo deprogramming. The bulk of the novel is set in the Australian outback, as Ruth and an American deprogramming specialist, PJ, match wits in less than ideal circumstances. This novel seems to explore issues of power and control, as well as belief and the nature & purpose of faith, as PJ challenges Ruth to examine the cult she has embraced. Ruth, however, wields her sexuality like a blunt instrument, and the dynamic of the deprogramming is irretrievably altered. Some of us liked this book, more of us didn't. The writing style, reflective of multiple authors, is disjointed and fails to completely hold the reader. The characterisation is unsympathetic and somewhat two-dimensional. We were all struck by the portrayal of PJ: unprepared, unprofessional and driven by questionable motivations. Both Ruth and PJ are ultimately anti-heroes, moving neither forward nor back during the course of the tale, and one is left to ponder who deprogrammed whom? There are some quirky (and quite funny) moments in the novel--we all liked the painted sheep--and there is a supporting cast of over the top family and friends reminiscent of Muriel's Wedding that will probably translate better on to the screen, than on paper. We were left with two unresolved questions: Just what was the significance of the title "Holy Smoke"?, and why, oh why was PJ wearing that dress? If you can shed light on these matters, please, please do so!

The Companionable Readers Bookclub

I haven't seen the movie of this book, and to be honest, i am not very inspired to now.

The story is about a girl tricked into returning to her family in Australia, as she was in an Ashram in India where she was to marry her guru. She is taken into the bush to be 'deprogrammed' by an expert brought in from America to do the deed.

Meant to be an exploration about feelings, relationships and power, this story comes out as mainly tosh, swapping from the first person perspective of PJ (the deprogrammer) to Ruth (the deprogrammee). It isn't helped by being full of caricatures insted of characters. This book was a big let down, and i would suggest trying something else instead.