Showing Holy Smoke by Anna Campion

If a book's authored by the director of famed films like The Piano and Angel at my Table, then it's inevitable that it will be regarded a screenplay-in-waiting. If a book is authored by two directors, then so much the worse. If those directors are sisters, then the overload of biographical and cinematic expectations could well leave the book almost unread. And if there¹s a Miramax film version imminent starring Harvey Keitel and Kate Winslett, then why bother at all? Let's wait for the video. Which would be a pity. Holy Smoke is an intriguing experiment in narrative, a rare enough occurrence in today's fiction. It concerns the attempts of American cult specialist and "exit counsellor" P.J. Waters to "de- programme" a young Australian woman named Ruth, on her family's request, after she has joined the followers of a guru in India. Most of the novel moves between P.J.'s and Ruth's first person narratives, forcing us to forge a composite story from two impossibly incompatible sources, and to address the emotional complexities of a difficult issue. Ruth is the more successfully rendered character, a passionate, scatty presence; P.J. does not quite convince as he needs to. Yet whatever its flaws, if this came without the Campion imprint, then we'd have little trouble in welcoming it as an interesting and worthwhile new literary voice. -- Alan Stewart