Smokeheads follows Adam, Roddy, Ethan and Luke on their manly whisky weekend. They drink a lot, flirt a lot, drive too fast, share too much. All good in the hood. Until around page 103, everything is sweet. It's a fun, laddish romp. Just the guys hanging out. In the space of around ten pages, though, their weekend gets worse, and worse, and worse, and oh my God so bad. I spent the first part of the novel trying to conceive ideas of how things might go wrong, what might happen to them. I figured a bit of fighting, some falling out. That happens, yes. And so does everything else. I don't want to give the game away, put the nightmare they go through is brutal, and certainly not for the squeamish. Fact is, I couldn't get to the end without audible 'eww's and disgusted grimaces. Pretty picture.
Not to put you off. Smokeheads is brilliant. Everyone loves a bunch of unlikely lads who, I should say, just in case, are going on 40, not going on 20. This isn't some kind of Skins episode. These guys are real men, with real lives and everything, and they can still manage to mess up their lives. They're just guys on a wee weekend away, and Johnstone seems to have really enjoyed making it as messed up as possible. Not in a sadistic way, but Smokeheads does read like it was very good fun to write. Still, I was quite exhausted by the end - it's incredible how fucked up (because there's not really any other way of describing this) life can get in the space of just a few hours. What a difference a day makes. Smokeheads takes real life banter and disbanter, and really stretches it. But bizarrely, it still seems very real, and scarily plausible. This would be an amazing film, if done properly. And I wouldn't mind helping scout an actor to play Roddy either (just sayin'.)
As much as Smokeheads made me really want some whisky, I'm equally glad that I don't actually like the stuff. Just in case. But it's a good read - just four men having fun and searching to achieve their dreams. Honest?
