Articles liés à Smoke
L'édition de cet ISBN n'est malheureusement plus disponible.
Afficher les exemplaires de cette édition ISBN
Extrait :
T H E T R I P
They make him wait for his punishment.
It’s laundry day the next morning and, having no choice, Thomas throws the sodden, smelly shirt into the basket, along with the week’s underwear and bedclothes. The Soot stain has faded but not disappeared.
It is no consolation to Thomas that many a schoolboy adds his own stained clothes to the growing pile. Each transgression leaves behind its own type of Soot, and those versed in such matters can determine the severity of your crime just by studying the stain’s density and grit. This is why no classes in Smoke and Ethics are scheduled for laundry day: the master, Dr. Renfrew, spends his morning locked in his office, root- ing through boys’ underclothes. The list of those found guilty of “Unclean Thoughts and Actions” is displayed in a glass cabinet before lunch, so that each schoolboy may learn what punishment has been levied on him. Two days of dining-hall service; three pages that have to be copied from the Sec- ond Book of Smoke; a public apology at school assembly. These, for minor transgressions. More serious offences require individual investigation. The boy in question will be called to the master’s study, to answer for his sins. There is a chair there, upholstered in leather, that is equipped with leather straps. The boys call it the dentist’s chair. No teeth are pulled, but the truth, Dr. Renfrew has been known to say, has to be dug up by the roots. For the most serious violations of Good Order even this procedure is seen to be insufficient. They require the calling of something referred to as a “tribu- nal.” So Thomas has heard. There has been no such case in the weeks since he’s been at school.
In class, Thomas sits distracted and is reprimanded when he cannot recite the four principles of Aristotle’s theory of causation. Another boy recites them with glib relish. He is not asked what the four principles mean, how they are used, or what good they may do; nor who this Aris- totle was whose marble bust stands in the school hallway, near the por- trait of Lord Shrewsbury, the school’s esteemed founder. And in general Thomas has found that the school is more interested in the outward form of things rather than their meaning; that learning is a matter of reciting names or dates or numbers: smartly, loudly, and with great conviction. He has proven, thus far, a very bad student.
At lunch, he hardly eats. He is sitting in the school refectory, which has the shape and general dimensions of a chapel and is dreadfully cold. December winds have pushed the snow into the windows. On the outside they are shrouded in dull white that saps the warmth from every ray of sun. On the inside, they bleed cold water from the edges of their metal frames. On the floor, the puddles refreeze and eat away at the unvarnished wood.
Lunch is a cut of hard gammon half hidden under a ladleful of luke- warm peas. Each bite tastes like mud to Thomas, and twice he bites down on the fork by accident, digging the prongs into his tongue. Halfway through the meal Charlie spots him and joins him at the table. One of the teachers held him up after class. Charlie waits until the skinny little boy on service duty has condemned him to his own piece of leathery gammon with its attendant pile of yellowing peas.
“Anything?” he asks.
Thomas shakes his head. “Nothing. Look at them, though. They are all waiting for it. The pupils, and the teachers, too. All of them, impatient. Yearning for the bloody shoe to drop.”
He speaks resentfully and even as the last word leaves his lips, a wisp of Smoke curls from his nostril, too light and thin to leave behind Soot. Charlie disperses it with a quick wave. He is not worried. Hardly anyone gets through the day without a minor transgression, and there have been days when a teacher could be seen flapping at a thread of Smoke pouring from his tongue. The students tend to like these teachers better. In their imperfection they are closer to their own states of grace.
“They can’t send you home.” Charlie sounds like he believes it. “You’ve only just got here.”
“Maybe.”
“He’ll call you into his office, Renfrew will.” “I suppose so.”
“You’ll have to tell him how it was. No holding back.”
And then Charlie says what’s been on Thomas’s mind all morning. What he hasn’t dared spell out.
“Otherwise he mightn’t let you join the Trip.” Thomas nods and finds his mouth too dry to speak.
The Trip is what everyone has been talking about from the minute he arrived at school. It’s a unique event: there has been nothing like it in the school’s history for close to three decades. Rumour has it that it was Ren- frew who had insisted on the Trip’s revival, and that he has faced fierce opposition, from the teachers, the parents, and from the Board of Gov- ernors itself. It’s hardly surprising. Most decent folk have never been to London. To take a group of schoolboys there is considered extraordinary, almost outlandish. There have been voices suggesting that it will put the whole school in danger. That the boys who go might never return.
Thomas still has trouble finding spit for words. “I want to go” is all he manages before breaking into a dry cough. It does not quite capture what he feels. He needs to see it. The prospect of the Trip is the only thing that’s kept him going these past few weeks. The moment he heard about it was the moment he decided there might be a meaning to his coming to school, a higher purpose. He’d be hard-pressed to say exactly what he expects from their visit to London. A revelation, perhaps. Something that will explain the world to him.
The cough runs its course, exhausts itself in a curse. “That bastard Julius. I could kill the bloody turd.” Charlie’s face is so honest it hurts.
“If you can’t go, Thomas, I won’t—”
Thomas cuts him short because a group of teachers are passing them. They are speaking animatedly, but drop their voices to a whisper the moment they draw level with the boys. Resentment flickers through Thomas’s features, and is followed by another exhalation of pale, thin Smoke. His tongue shows black for a second, but he swallows the Soot. You do that too often, your windpipe roughens and your tonsils start to darken, along with what’s behind. There is a glass jar in the science class- room with a lung so black it looks dipped in tar.
“Look at them whispering. They are enjoying this! Making me stew in my own fat. Why don’t they just get on with it? Put me in the bloody dock!” But Charlie shakes his head, watches the teachers huddle near the door.
“I don’t think they’re talking about you, Thomas. There is something else going on. I noticed it earlier, when I went to the Porter’s Lodge, to see if I had any mail. Master Foybles was there, talking to Cruikshank, the porter. Making inquiries. They are waiting for something, some sort of delivery. And it’s important. Foybles sounded pretty desperate. He kept on saying, ‘You’ll let me know, won’t you? The minute it arrives.’ As though he were suspecting Cruikshank of hiding it away somewhere. Whatever it is.”
Thomas considers this. “Something they need for the Trip?”
“I don’t know,” says Charlie, thoughtful. “If it is, it better come today. If they have to postpone the Trip, they might end up cancelling it altogether.” He cuts a piece of gammon like it’s wronged him somehow, spilling peas on all sides. Thomas curses and turns to his own lunch. Leaving food on your plate is against the rules and carries its own punishment, as though it is proof of some invisible type of Smoke.
ф
They send for him after vespers.
It’s Julius who comes for him, smirking, Thomas can see him all the way down the corridor, an extra flourish to his step. Julius does not say anything. Indeed he does not need to, a gesture is enough, a sort of wave of the hand that starts at the chest and ends up pointing outward, down the length of the hall. Ironic, like he’s a waiter, inviting Thomas to the table. And then Julius leads the way, walking very slowly now, his hands in his pockets, calling to some boys to open the door up ahead.
Making sure everyone knows.
Keeping pace with Julius, trapped behind that slow, slouching, no- haste-no-worry-in-the-world walk: it’s enough to make Thomas’s blood boil. He can taste Smoke on his breath and wonders if he’s showing. A dark gown covers his shirt but he will soon be asked to remove it, no doubt, and expose his linens. He attempts to calm himself, picks Soot out of his teeth with the tip of his tongue. Its bitterness makes him gag.
Julius slows down even further as they approach Dr. Renfrew’s door. The Master of Smoke and Ethics. It’s a new post, that, no older than a year. It used to be the Master of Religion was in charge of all the moral educa- tion, or so Charlie’s told him. When they arrive at the door, Julius pauses, smirks, and shakes his head. Then he walks on, faster now, gesturing for Thomas to keep pace.
It takes Thomas a minute to understand what’s just happened. He is not going to see Dr. Renfrew. There will be no dentist’s chair for him. It’s worse than that. They are heading to the headmaster’s quarters.
There’s to be a tribunal.
The word alone makes him feel sick.
ф
Julius does not knock when they reach the headmaster’s door. This con- fuses Thomas, until they’ve stepped through. It leads not to a room but to a sort of antechamber, like a waiting room at the doctor’s, two long benches on each side, and an icy draft from the row of windows on the right. They are high up here, in one of the school’s towers. Beneath them, the fields of Oxfordshire: a silver sea of frozen moonlight. Down by the brook, a tree rises from the snow-choked grounds, stripped of its leaves by winter. A willow, its drooping branches dipped into the river, their tips trapped in ice. Thomas turns away, shivering, and notices that the door back to the hallway is padded from the inside, to proof it against sound. To protect the headmaster from the school’s noise, no doubt. And so nobody can hear you scream.
Julius stands at the other door, knocks on it gently, with his head boy’s confidence and tact. It opens after only a moment: Renfrew’s face, framed by blond hair and beard.
“You are here, Argyle. Good. Sit.”
Then adds, as Julius turns to leave: “You too.” Renfrew closes the door before Julius can ask why.
ф
They sit on opposite sides, Thomas with his back to the windows, Julius facing them, and the moon. It affords Thomas the opportunity to study him. Something has gone out of the lad, at this “You too.” Some of the swagger, the I-own-the-world certainty. He is chewing his cheek, it appears. A good-looking boy, Thomas is forced to admit, fair-skinned and dark- haired, his long thin whiskers more down than beard. Thomas waits until Julius’s eyes fall on him, then leans forward.
“Does it hurt? The tooth, I mean.”
Julius does not react at once, hides his emotions as he does so well. “You are in trouble,” he says at last. “I am here only as a witness.”
Which is true in all likelihood, but nonetheless he looks a tad ruffled, Julius does, and Thomas cannot help gloating a little over his victory. They looked for the tooth late last night when Charlie and he were trying to clean his shirt, but it was gone. Julius must have picked it up himself. It would have made a nice souvenir. But that was then and now he is here, his hands all sweaty, casting around for bravado. Waiting. How much easier it would be to fight, even to lose: a fist in your face, a nosebleed, an ice bag on your aches. Thomas leans back, tries to unknot his shoulders. The moon is their only light source. When a cloud travels across it, the little waiting room is thrown into darkness. All he can see of Julius now is a shadow, black as Soot.
It must be a quarter of an hour before Renfrew calls them in. Rich, golden gaslight welcomes them; thick carpets that suck all sound from their steps. They are all there, all the masters. There are seven of them— Renfrew-Foybles-Harmon-Swinburne-Barlow-Winslow-Trout—but only three that count. Renfrew is tall and well-built, and still rather young. He wears his hair short, as well as his beard, and favours a dark, belted suit that seems to encase him from neck to ankle. A white silken scarf, worn tight at the throat, vouches for his virtue.
Trout is the headmaster. He is very fat and wears his trousers very high, so that the quantity of flesh between the top of his thighs and the waist- band dwarfs the short sunken chest, adorned though it is with fine lace and ruffles. What he lacks in hair, Trout makes up for in whiskers. His button nose seems lost between the swell of his red cheeks.
Swinburne, finally: the Master of Religion. Where Renfrew is tall, Swinburne is towering, if twisted by age. He wears the cap and smock of his office. The little one sees of his face is mottled with broken veins, the shape and colour of thistles. A beard covers the rest, long and stringy.
Renfrew, Swinburne, Trout: each of them, it is said, entangled in affairs that reach from school to Parliament and Crown. Thomas has often thought of painting them. He is good with a brush. A triptych. He has not decided yet who belongs at the centre.
It’s Renfrew who bids them sit. He points to two chairs that have been pulled up into the middle of the room, making no distinction between them. Compared to the theatricality of Julius’s examination last night, the gesture is almost casual. The masters are standing in clusters, wearing worsted winter suits. Some are holding teacups; Foybles is munching a biscuit. Thomas sits. After a moment’s hesitation Julius follows suit.
“You know why you are here.”
It is a statement, not a question, and Renfrew turns even as he makes it, reaches into a basket, retrieves something. It affords Thomas another moment to look around the room. He sees a leather settee and a brass chandelier; stained-glass windows with scenes from the Scriptures, Saint George with his lance through the dragon’s throat; sees a painting of a fox hunt under a dappled sky; sees cabinets, and doors, and a sideboard with fine china; sees all this, but takes in little, his mind skittish, his skin tingling, nervous, afraid. When Renfrew turns back to them he is holding two shirts. He places one over the back of an unoccupied chair, spreads the other between his hands, displaying the Soot stain; runs his fingertips through it, tests its grit.
And launches into lecture.
“Smoke,” he says, “can have many colours. Often it is light and grey, almost white, with no more odour than a struck match. Then there is yellow Smoke, dense and wet like fog. Blue Smoke that smells acrid, like spoiled milk, and seems to disperse almost as soon as it has formed. Once in a while we witness black Smoke, oily and viscous; it will cling to any- thing it touches. The variations of texture, density, and shade have all been carefully...
Présentation de l'éditeur :
T H E T R I P
They make him wait for his punishment.
It’s laundry day the next morning and, having no choice, Thomas throws the sodden, smelly shirt into the basket, along with the week’s underwear and bedclothes. The Soot stain has faded but not disappeared.
It is no consolation to Thomas that many a schoolboy adds his own stained clothes to the growing pile. Each transgression leaves behind its own type of Soot, and those versed in such matters can determine the severity of your crime just by studying the stain’s density and grit. This is why no classes in Smoke and Ethics are scheduled for laundry day: the master, Dr. Renfrew, spends his morning locked in his office, root- ing through boys’ underclothes. The list of those found guilty of “Unclean Thoughts and Actions” is displayed in a glass cabinet before lunch, so that each schoolboy may learn what punishment has been levied on him. Two days of dining-hall service; three pages that have to be copied from the Sec- ond Book of Smoke; a public apology at school assembly. These, for minor transgressions. More serious offences require individual investigation. The boy in question will be called to the master’s study, to answer for his sins. There is a chair there, upholstered in leather, that is equipped with leather straps. The boys call it the dentist’s chair. No teeth are pulled, but the truth, Dr. Renfrew has been known to say, has to be dug up by the roots. For the most serious violations of Good Order even this procedure is seen to be insufficient. They require the calling of something referred to as a “tribu- nal.” So Thomas has heard. There has been no such case in the weeks since he’s been at school.
In class, Thomas sits distracted and is reprimanded when he cannot recite the four principles of Aristotle’s theory of causation. Another boy recites them with glib relish. He is not asked what the four principles mean, how they are used, or what good they may do; nor who this Aris- totle was whose marble bust stands in the school hallway, near the por- trait of Lord Shrewsbury, the school’s esteemed founder. And in general Thomas has found that the school is more interested in the outward form of things rather than their meaning; that learning is a matter of reciting names or dates or numbers: smartly, loudly, and with great conviction. He has proven, thus far, a very bad student.
At lunch, he hardly eats. He is sitting in the school refectory, which has the shape and general dimensions of a chapel and is dreadfully cold. December winds have pushed the snow into the windows. On the outside they are shrouded in dull white that saps the warmth from every ray of sun. On the inside, they bleed cold water from the edges of their metal frames. On the floor, the puddles refreeze and eat away at the unvarnished wood.
Lunch is a cut of hard gammon half hidden under a ladleful of luke- warm peas. Each bite tastes like mud to Thomas, and twice he bites down on the fork by accident, digging the prongs into his tongue. Halfway through the meal Charlie spots him and joins him at the table. One of the teachers held him up after class. Charlie waits until the skinny little boy on service duty has condemned him to his own piece of leathery gammon with its attendant pile of yellowing peas.
“Anything?” he asks.
Thomas shakes his head. “Nothing. Look at them, though. They are all waiting for it. The pupils, and the teachers, too. All of them, impatient. Yearning for the bloody shoe to drop.”
He speaks resentfully and even as the last word leaves his lips, a wisp of Smoke curls from his nostril, too light and thin to leave behind Soot. Charlie disperses it with a quick wave. He is not worried. Hardly anyone gets through the day without a minor transgression, and there have been days when a teacher could be seen flapping at a thread of Smoke pouring from his tongue. The students tend to like these teachers better. In their imperfection they are closer to their own states of grace.
“They can’t send you home.” Charlie sounds like he believes it. “You’ve only just got here.”
“Maybe.”
“He’ll call you into his office, Renfrew will.” “I suppose so.”
“You’ll have to tell him how it was. No holding back.”
And then Charlie says what’s been on Thomas’s mind all morning. What he hasn’t dared spell out.
“Otherwise he mightn’t let you join the Trip.” Thomas nods and finds his mouth too dry to speak.
The Trip is what everyone has been talking about from the minute he arrived at school. It’s a unique event: there has been nothing like it in the school’s history for close to three decades. Rumour has it that it was Ren- frew who had insisted on the Trip’s revival, and that he has faced fierce opposition, from the teachers, the parents, and from the Board of Gov- ernors itself. It’s hardly surprising. Most decent folk have never been to London. To take a group of schoolboys there is considered extraordinary, almost outlandish. There have been voices suggesting that it will put the whole school in danger. That the boys who go might never return.
Thomas still has trouble finding spit for words. “I want to go” is all he manages before breaking into a dry cough. It does not quite capture what he feels. He needs to see it. The prospect of the Trip is the only thing that’s kept him going these past few weeks. The moment he heard about it was the moment he decided there might be a meaning to his coming to school, a higher purpose. He’d be hard-pressed to say exactly what he expects from their visit to London. A revelation, perhaps. Something that will explain the world to him.
The cough runs its course, exhausts itself in a curse. “That bastard Julius. I could kill the bloody turd.” Charlie’s face is so honest it hurts.
“If you can’t go, Thomas, I won’t—”
Thomas cuts him short because a group of teachers are passing them. They are speaking animatedly, but drop their voices to a whisper the moment they draw level with the boys. Resentment flickers through Thomas’s features, and is followed by another exhalation of pale, thin Smoke. His tongue shows black for a second, but he swallows the Soot. You do that too often, your windpipe roughens and your tonsils start to darken, along with what’s behind. There is a glass jar in the science class- room with a lung so black it looks dipped in tar.
“Look at them whispering. They are enjoying this! Making me stew in my own fat. Why don’t they just get on with it? Put me in the bloody dock!” But Charlie shakes his head, watches the teachers huddle near the door.
“I don’t think they’re talking about you, Thomas. There is something else going on. I noticed it earlier, when I went to the Porter’s Lodge, to see if I had any mail. Master Foybles was there, talking to Cruikshank, the porter. Making inquiries. They are waiting for something, some sort of delivery. And it’s important. Foybles sounded pretty desperate. He kept on saying, ‘You’ll let me know, won’t you? The minute it arrives.’ As though he were suspecting Cruikshank of hiding it away somewhere. Whatever it is.”
Thomas considers this. “Something they need for the Trip?”
“I don’t know,” says Charlie, thoughtful. “If it is, it better come today. If they have to postpone the Trip, they might end up cancelling it altogether.” He cuts a piece of gammon like it’s wronged him somehow, spilling peas on all sides. Thomas curses and turns to his own lunch. Leaving food on your plate is against the rules and carries its own punishment, as though it is proof of some invisible type of Smoke.
ф
They send for him after vespers.
It’s Julius who comes for him, smirking, Thomas can see him all the way down the corridor, an extra flourish to his step. Julius does not say anything. Indeed he does not need to, a gesture is enough, a sort of wave of the hand that starts at the chest and ends up pointing outward, down the length of the hall. Ironic, like he’s a waiter, inviting Thomas to the table. And then Julius leads the way, walking very slowly now, his hands in his pockets, calling to some boys to open the door up ahead.
Making sure everyone knows.
Keeping pace with Julius, trapped behind that slow, slouching, no- haste-no-worry-in-the-world walk: it’s enough to make Thomas’s blood boil. He can taste Smoke on his breath and wonders if he’s showing. A dark gown covers his shirt but he will soon be asked to remove it, no doubt, and expose his linens. He attempts to calm himself, picks Soot out of his teeth with the tip of his tongue. Its bitterness makes him gag.
Julius slows down even further as they approach Dr. Renfrew’s door. The Master of Smoke and Ethics. It’s a new post, that, no older than a year. It used to be the Master of Religion was in charge of all the moral educa- tion, or so Charlie’s told him. When they arrive at the door, Julius pauses, smirks, and shakes his head. Then he walks on, faster now, gesturing for Thomas to keep pace.
It takes Thomas a minute to understand what’s just happened. He is not going to see Dr. Renfrew. There will be no dentist’s chair for him. It’s worse than that. They are heading to the headmaster’s quarters.
There’s to be a tribunal.
The word alone makes him feel sick.
ф
Julius does not knock when they reach the headmaster’s door. This con- fuses Thomas, until they’ve stepped through. It leads not to a room but to a sort of antechamber, like a waiting room at the doctor’s, two long benches on each side, and an icy draft from the row of windows on the right. They are high up here, in one of the school’s towers. Beneath them, the fields of Oxfordshire: a silver sea of frozen moonlight. Down by the brook, a tree rises from the snow-choked grounds, stripped of its leaves by winter. A willow, its drooping branches dipped into the river, their tips trapped in ice. Thomas turns away, shivering, and notices that the door back to the hallway is padded from the inside, to proof it against sound. To protect the headmaster from the school’s noise, no doubt. And so nobody can hear you scream.
Julius stands at the other door, knocks on it gently, with his head boy’s confidence and tact. It opens after only a moment: Renfrew’s face, framed by blond hair and beard.
“You are here, Argyle. Good. Sit.”
Then adds, as Julius turns to leave: “You too.” Renfrew closes the door before Julius can ask why.
ф
They sit on opposite sides, Thomas with his back to the windows, Julius facing them, and the moon. It affords Thomas the opportunity to study him. Something has gone out of the lad, at this “You too.” Some of the swagger, the I-own-the-world certainty. He is chewing his cheek, it appears. A good-looking boy, Thomas is forced to admit, fair-skinned and dark- haired, his long thin whiskers more down than beard. Thomas waits until Julius’s eyes fall on him, then leans forward.
“Does it hurt? The tooth, I mean.”
Julius does not react at once, hides his emotions as he does so well. “You are in trouble,” he says at last. “I am here only as a witness.”
Which is true in all likelihood, but nonetheless he looks a tad ruffled, Julius does, and Thomas cannot help gloating a little over his victory. They looked for the tooth late last night when Charlie and he were trying to clean his shirt, but it was gone. Julius must have picked it up himself. It would have made a nice souvenir. But that was then and now he is here, his hands all sweaty, casting around for bravado. Waiting. How much easier it would be to fight, even to lose: a fist in your face, a nosebleed, an ice bag on your aches. Thomas leans back, tries to unknot his shoulders. The moon is their only light source. When a cloud travels across it, the little waiting room is thrown into darkness. All he can see of Julius now is a shadow, black as Soot.
It must be a quarter of an hour before Renfrew calls them in. Rich, golden gaslight welcomes them; thick carpets that suck all sound from their steps. They are all there, all the masters. There are seven of them— Renfrew-Foybles-Harmon-Swinburne-Barlow-Winslow-Trout—but only three that count. Renfrew is tall and well-built, and still rather young. He wears his hair short, as well as his beard, and favours a dark, belted suit that seems to encase him from neck to ankle. A white silken scarf, worn tight at the throat, vouches for his virtue.
Trout is the headmaster. He is very fat and wears his trousers very high, so that the quantity of flesh between the top of his thighs and the waist- band dwarfs the short sunken chest, adorned though it is with fine lace and ruffles. What he lacks in hair, Trout makes up for in whiskers. His button nose seems lost between the swell of his red cheeks.
Swinburne, finally: the Master of Religion. Where Renfrew is tall, Swinburne is towering, if twisted by age. He wears the cap and smock of his office. The little one sees of his face is mottled with broken veins, the shape and colour of thistles. A beard covers the rest, long and stringy.
Renfrew, Swinburne, Trout: each of them, it is said, entangled in affairs that reach from school to Parliament and Crown. Thomas has often thought of painting them. He is good with a brush. A triptych. He has not decided yet who belongs at the centre.
It’s Renfrew who bids them sit. He points to two chairs that have been pulled up into the middle of the room, making no distinction between them. Compared to the theatricality of Julius’s examination last night, the gesture is almost casual. The masters are standing in clusters, wearing worsted winter suits. Some are holding teacups; Foybles is munching a biscuit. Thomas sits. After a moment’s hesitation Julius follows suit.
“You know why you are here.”
It is a statement, not a question, and Renfrew turns even as he makes it, reaches into a basket, retrieves something. It affords Thomas another moment to look around the room. He sees a leather settee and a brass chandelier; stained-glass windows with scenes from the Scriptures, Saint George with his lance through the dragon’s throat; sees a painting of a fox hunt under a dappled sky; sees cabinets, and doors, and a sideboard with fine china; sees all this, but takes in little, his mind skittish, his skin tingling, nervous, afraid. When Renfrew turns back to them he is holding two shirts. He places one over the back of an unoccupied chair, spreads the other between his hands, displaying the Soot stain; runs his fingertips through it, tests its grit.
And launches into lecture.
“Smoke,” he says, “can have many colours. Often it is light and grey, almost white, with no more odour than a struck match. Then there is yellow Smoke, dense and wet like fog. Blue Smoke that smells acrid, like spoiled milk, and seems to disperse almost as soon as it has formed. Once in a while we witness black Smoke, oily and viscous; it will cling to any- thing it touches. The variations of texture, density, and shade have all been carefully...
“Dan Vyleta has conjured a rich and surprising counter-history, an England saturated with a substance so potent and evocative it vaults instantly into the pantheon that includes the dust of Philip Pullman, the soma of George Orwell and the opium of Amitav Ghosh. Smoke is enthralling.” —Robin Sloan, bestselling author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore
England. A century ago, give or take a few years. An England where people who are wicked in thought or deed are marked by the Smoke that pours forth from their bodies, a sign of their fallen state. The aristocracy do not smoke, proof of their virtue and right to rule, while the lower classes are drenched in sin and soot. An England utterly strange and utterly real.
An elite boarding school where the sons of the wealthy are groomed to take power as their birthright. Teachers with mysterious ties to warring political factions at the highest levels of government. Three young people who learn that everything they’ve been taught is a lie—knowledge that could cost them their lives. A grand estate where secrets lurk in attic rooms and hidden laboratories. Young love, or lust, turning to guilt. A desperate chase. Revolutionaries and secret police. Religious fanatics and cold-hearted scientists. Murder. A London filled with danger and wonder. A tortured relationship between a mother and a daughter, and a mother and a son. Unexpected villains and unexpected heroes. Cool reason versus passion. Rich versus poor. Right versus wrong, though which is which is far from clear.
This is the world of Smoke, a narrative tour de force, a tale of Dickensian intricacy and ferocious imaginative power, richly atmospheric and intensely suspenseful, told by a master storyteller.
Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.
- ÉditeurW&N
- Date d'édition2016
- ISBN 10 0297609939
- ISBN 13 9780297609933
- ReliureBroché
- Nombre de pages448
- Evaluation vendeur
Acheter neuf
En savoir plus sur cette édition
EUR 9,67
Frais de port :
EUR 5,27
De Royaume-Uni vers Etats-Unis
Meilleurs résultats de recherche sur AbeBooks
Image d'archives
Smoke
Edité par
Orion 2016-07-07, London
(2016)
ISBN 10 : 0297609939
ISBN 13 : 9780297609933
Neuf
paperback
Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Evaluation vendeur
Description du livre paperback. Etat : New. Language: ENG. N° de réf. du vendeur 9780297609933
Acheter neuf
EUR 9,67
Autre devise
Image d'archives
Smoke
Vendeur :
Evaluation vendeur
Description du livre Paperback. Etat : New. New copy - Usually dispatched within 4 working days. N° de réf. du vendeur B9780297609933
Acheter neuf
EUR 9,28
Autre devise
Image d'archives
Smoke (Orio06 120319)
Edité par
W&N
(2016)
ISBN 10 : 0297609939
ISBN 13 : 9780297609933
Neuf
Paperback
Quantité disponible : 2
Vendeur :
Evaluation vendeur
Description du livre Paperback. Etat : New. COVID/BREXIT/ROYAL MAIL STRIKES MAY MEAN DELAYS IN TRANSIT. Priority orders will be dispatched by Royal Mail TRACKED 24 or courier (particularly if over 2kg). Standard mail will be dispatched by Royal Mail TRACKED 48 (up to 2kg), heavier items by courier . Overseas orders will be dispatched by Royal Mail International.Tracked. PLEASE CONTACT ME FOR MY PRIVACY POLICY. N° de réf. du vendeur mon0000027036
Acheter neuf
EUR 9,78
Autre devise
Image d'archives
Smoke
Edité par
Orion Publishing Co
(2016)
ISBN 10 : 0297609939
ISBN 13 : 9780297609933
Neuf
PAP
Quantité disponible : 4
Vendeur :
Evaluation vendeur
Description du livre PAP. Etat : New. New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000. N° de réf. du vendeur AR-9780297609933
Acheter neuf
EUR 10,80
Autre devise
Image d'archives
Smoke (Paperback)
Edité par
Orion, London
(2016)
ISBN 10 : 0297609939
ISBN 13 : 9780297609933
Neuf
Paperback
Quantité disponible : 1
Vendeur :
Evaluation vendeur
Description du livre Paperback. Etat : new. Paperback. 'The laws of Smoke are complex. Not every lie will trigger it. A fleeting thought of evil may pass unseen. Next thing you know its smell is in your nose. There is no more hateful smell in the world than the smell of Smoke . . .' If sin were visible and you could see people's anger, their lust and cravings, what would the world be like? SMOKE opens in a private boarding school near Oxford, but history has not followed the path known to us. In this other past, sin appears as smoke on the body and soot on the clothes. Children are born carrying the seeds of evil within them. The ruling elite have learned to control their desires and contain their sin. They are spotless. It is within the closeted world of this school that the sons of the wealthy and well-connected are trained as future leaders. Among their number are two boys, Thomas and Charlie. On a trip to London, a forbidden city shrouded in smoke and darkness, the boys will witness an event that will make them question everything they have been told about the past. For there is more to the world of smoke, soot and ash than meets the eye and there are those who will stop at nothing to protect it. Imagine a world in which your sin is visible. addictive and intoxicating, SMOKE is a Dickensian, thrilling, rich layered novel for fans of PHILIP PULLMAN, THE SECRET HISTORY and THE PASSAGE. Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability. N° de réf. du vendeur 9780297609933
Acheter neuf
EUR 26,51
Autre devise