There’s always a risk in going back to a longer book after failing with it the first time. You may invest too much of your time without the payoff you were hoping for. American Psycho is a rare exception that worked for me. Most of them didn’t.
Tree of Smoke didn’t work either. This was my third attempt with it and I powered through it because there was enough interest in the characters to see where it was going but no. I don’t want to say it was a colossal waste of time, I just don’t really know what the point of this book is. A hangout novel for people involved in the Vietnam War? If so, the characters weren’t interesting enough.
And it’s weird because going back and reading the plot abstract on Wikipedia, it sounds like such an interesting book! Stuff happens and some of the writing is good. But it still feels like…nothing really happens. I’d get into 2-3 pages and then my attention would wane and I’d glaze at a few more before realizing that I had lost my footing of a book that, fortunately, is not plot dense.
If the book is supposed to be about psy-ops in Vietnam, then I think this worked because it psyched me up for 700 pages to thinking I might be reading a better book than I am. It’s clear from all the love Jesus’ Son gets that I need to read it some day. But this did not work for me at all.