Smoke: A Novel

"The idea of the “white lie” takes on a whole new meaning in Dan Vyleta’s Smoke. His novel imagines an alternate 19th century London where, instead of industrial smog, there is a moral one. Every lie or bad deed emanates from the body until its citizens are literally smoking. It’s also an adventure story about a pair of boarding school friends who begin to question everything the adults have ever told them about morality. That’s the most intriguing aspect of the book: It doesn’t lay down right and wrong, black and white — it revels in the gray."