Joan Smokes by Angela Meyer

Joan smokes. But why does Joan smoke? And who is Joan, anyway?

In Angela Meyer’s spare, searing, wonderful novella, Joan arrives in Las Vegas. All she has are

‘Bare basics - money, food, sleep, touch.’

In short, staccato phrases, Meyer paints a vivid picture of ‘the strip’

‘The buildings, the cars, waterfalls and feathers. It is orange desert dusk.’

Tiny hints are dropped. There are few explanations. Joan has started life in Australia. In the war, she met a man called Jack and ended up returning with him to America. Things have not gone well. Eventually they have gone very badly indeed. 

It’s in the small, almost throwaway, lines that Meyer conveys so much – about men, women, power and secrets. Joan is running away from something, and it’s something she wants to forget;

‘Don’t think about it.’

But little glimpses of memory keep sneaking back in. She sees the olive green feather-tails of the showgirls;

‘Greens…..he was always in green, in uniform.’

Gradually we start to learn the truth about Joan’s past. She was not Joan then, but it doesn’t matter. She is reinventing herself, teaching herself what this new person would be, from the colour of her hair to the way she likes her drinks;

‘What if she had just been in the wrong place for eighteen years? Had been the whole wrong person?’

Joan pays a visit to the nuclear testing site in the Nevada desert – for, incredible as it is to us now, at this time the public is still able to view these tests as some kind of spectator sport. Themes of bombs, of blasts, of the empty desert, run like a radioactive river through this story.

Nuclear testing - image: Las Vegas News Bureau

In 68 short, shocking, pages, Meyer explores the damage we do to our children, to ourselves, and to the world. Joan Smokes won the inaugural Mslexia Novella Award. It will haunt you.

Joan Smokes by Angela Meyer is published by Contraband, an imprint of Saraband.