The Smoking Diaries: The Last Cigarette, By Simon Gray

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Kelly Rissman

US News Reporter

This valedictory from Simon Gray, who died in August, is a delight, full as it is of all that is best and worst about human nature: hatred, fear, joy, generosity, compassion, honesty. In it, he is facing up to the end of 60 years of smoking, so a certain irascibility is inevitable, but it's always amusing how the small things cause the greatest outbursts – for example his utter disgust at the woman next to him on a plane who can't stop sneezing and blowing her nose and stuffing paper cups with used hankies.

He is honest, too, about his friendship with Harold Pinter, battling cancer and still terrifying and upsetting friends with his temper – always followed by profuse apologies. But it is Gray's acknowledgement of his fear of the future – the fear of dying, the fear of pain, of things getting worse – that makes his intelligent and witty musings and meanderings as touching as they are. So, yes, more than anything, this is a book about endings, as troubling and as beautiful as they may be.

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