Literary Nonfiction. There are many ways I might describe Jehanne Dubrow's riveting new project, THROUGHSMOKE: 'a capacious lyric essay that distills many voices into one' (true ), or 'a stirring meditation on the olfactory sensibility' (yes ), or even 'a remarkable compendium of facts about perfume' (indeed ). But THROUGHSMOKE is also an elegantly braided exploration of what fragrance opens up in us--a haunting and ephemeral guide, as the finest fragrances are, to memory, obsession, grief, and desire. 'Perhaps, it was inevitable that I love these things, ' Dubrow's speaker muses at one point. It seems likewise inevitable that I would love this book.--Julie Marie Wad