Nicotine

Reviews / Votes

'If Nicotine has a literary progenitor I would say that it is In Search of Lost Time [...] an extraordinary act of literary finesse [...] [with] tinkling little notes of comedy [...] [a] dark, lovely, funny book.'

- Joan Acocella, The New Yorker '[W]hen Nicotine stays dry, earthy and combustible, like a Virginia tobacco blend, it has a lot to say and says it well.'

- Dwight Garner, New York Times 'A satisfying wisp of an essay about tobacco, addiction, first cigarettes, last cigarettes, breathing, kissing, hypnosis, literature, memory, and marking time [...] Nicotine is a smoke ring, blown perfectly in a single puff, or - better? - a wafting trail of vapor. Will Self contributes a foreword, a rapid monologue punctuated with vigorous little twists, as though he were grinding out a stub with yellow-stained fingers.'

- Christine Smallwood, Harper's