"You don't have to like James Rainer Willing to like Noise, the exuberant lampoon of which he is the over-elegant centrepiece. And a good thing too -- dour, self-absorbed, the most pretentious restaurant critic ever to hit the pages of a trendy tabloid, Willing is a throwback to the hilariously unsatisfactory heroes and heroines of Kingsley Amis and Evelyn Waugh. Smith, whose 1994 novel, How Insensitive, mined similar territory -- the lives of Toronto's helplessly hip -- offers here a more polished portrait of a distracted magazine writer for whom la vie bohême is rapidly becoming La vie ho-hum. ... Smith picks on the effete and the dowdy with a bracing even- handedness: he's just as good at nailing what makes motel dining rooms so creepy as he is at skewering performance poets."

Saturday Night

"Noise is not so much a novel as a series of sketches. Many of them ... are priceless. In one episode, Willing and his girlfriend visit an upscale restaurant and witness its famous chef and his boyfriend, the sous-chef, having a colossal hissy fit.... In these and other scenes, Smith plays to his strengths -- a well-tuned ear for speech, a keen eye for absurdity, a wicked aptitude for ridicule. These are writerly strengths that Canadian literature badly needs."

The Toronto Star

"A poisonously funny portrait of (Toronto's) so-hip-it-hurts fashion, food, and bar scene ... Noise trumpets Smith's energetic talent."

Maclean's

"Smith has a journalist's eye for the details of speech and dress that identify the social niche of the characters -- but with an Evelyn Waughesque emphasis on their comic possibilities."

Toronto Star

"[Smith's] love-hate relationship with Toronto has led to one of the few growing bodies of work in which our biggest city figures as a character ... Smith celebrates the possibilities glimpsed amid the noise and the constant striving."

The Globe and Mail