X20 : A Novel of Not Smoking by Richard Beard

Gregory Simpson is giving up smoking and he has a plan: each time he craves a cigarette he’ll write something down instead. But everything he writes has something to do with smoking; X20 (the title refers to the number of cigarettes in a pack) is the result — a crisp, funny, and devastatingly stylish debut from an extraordinary new talent.In the first throes of withdrawal, Simpson writes in tense fits and starts, obsessing over lost loves and how cigarettes both blessed and doomed these relationships. As his ability to concentrate without cigarettes improves day-by-day, he reexamines his friendship with Dr. Barclay, a scientist forever on the verge of developing a safe cigarette, and with Julian Carr, an old friend and now a flack for a cigarette company.In Thank You for Smoking, Christopher Buckley gave us the tobacco company flacks. In Cigarettes Are Sublime, Robert Klein took on the actual cigarettes. In X20, Richard Beard presents the smoker himself, facing the same dilemma millions of smoking and ex-smoking Americans face every day: Gregory’s life has been shaped by, even built from, his relationship with cigarettes. What, without them, now?