Customer Reviews

April Fools Day

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is BC's non-fiction novel that tells the story of his son Damon - in heart-wrenching detail - about his plight with AIDS. Oh, and lest I forget, AIDS that was injected into him by the Australian medical community, thanks to their lax policies on blood donorship.

For those not up on BC, a short history - BC was under a deadline to produce TANDIA (the "Power of One" sequel), and many fans were lukewarm about Tandia - well, it was because everything you read in 'April Fools day' was going on while he had to finish it!

Back to this novel - it is a must-read for anyone with a curiosity about what a family goes through in the face of tragedy, and one that doesn't mind LIVING through the REAL life drama and frustration of a father and mother doing EVERYTHING they can to save their son dying of a disease. It got this grown man some major lumps in my throat, fists on the table, and some tears here and there - I cannot say that about anything I have ever read before in my life. Bryce really puts all his heart and soul to make you, the reader, feel his anger, pain, helplessness and sorrow about someone you will never know. This is a major literary achievement for one of the most brilliant authors of our time.

As I have said in some of my other BC reviews - it is a shame that he does not get more 'exposure' in the US. My wife and I have read everything he has ever done, and not 1 page is a dud amongst the thousands he has written - and we can name thousands of duds out there right now on your supermarket shelves...

Since purchasing this book when it was first released I have read and reread it yet it still has not lost the power that gripped me originally nor the need for tissues. Bryce Courtenay tells a personal, emotive story with a great deal of feeling. His descriptions of the life of a person with aids are thought provoking and compassionate. I feel as if I know Damon and Celeste just through what is written. April Fools Day is a must read for all people. It will keep your attention right through to the end.

April Fool's Day is the most moving book I've read this year. I find it really important that Courtenay decided to share such a personal thing to share with us. Although Damon died when he was only 24, I believe he was very lucky to have known really love (I wish every man had a loyal and wonderful girlfriend like Celeste) and have had constant support from his parents and brothers. Despite the acute and neverending pain he was in all the time, I believe, Damon was very strong, stronger than most of the people I've met or heard of, because he didn't want anyone to pity him for his illness. He tried everything he could to lead a normal life and has made me aware that nothing in this world is more important than health. Thus we should treasure every single minute in our lives. Bryce Courtenay is one of the best authors, and if there are better authors than him I'm afraid I haven't read them yet. Thank you.

Damon Courtenay dies in the first line of the first, introductory chapter of this 666 page book; thus 665 pages tell the story of his life from birth to that death on April Fool's Day, 1991, when Bryce and Benita Courtenay were forced, after 25 years, to surrender their youngest son to the inevitable.

The young salesgirl from whom I purchased my copy some weeks ago tried to sell me a jumbo box of tissues to go with it...
"You'll need them..." she advised, and I suppose I did, but somehow the sheer length of Damon's journey fom death to birth- and back again to death is so incredibly gruelling that the reader is left as numb and drained as were his parents and his devoted parner, Celeste.

"A Modern Love Story" is the book's subtitle, and there is no accident to the nonsubtle cynicism of this description...for this is an ANGRY book, a book that rages, not just against the genetic tragedy that bypassed Benita Courtenay's first two sons to claim Damon- but it is also an anguished, embittered railing aginst the bureaucraticc bunglings, mismanagement, highhandedness and incompetencies that led to his death at such an early age.
For Damon Courtenay, born a haemophiliac, died of Aids....transfusion- induced Aids....Aids introduced by transfusions of blood products accepted from donor groups long decreed unacceptable in other countries, using a technique acknowledged to be less safe than other proven, more costly methods. In Australia, at that time, under the Equal Opportunity provisions, EVERYONE had the right to give blood...and a Health Minister defended that right, even though the mechanics of Aids transmission were already becoming widely known.
But before the Aids, there was the haemophilia.......

..."...Haemophilia is as extraordinarily painful and protracted disease. A bleed is usually treated eight or ten hours after it has started, for it takes this long for a knock to become more painful thatn the initial bump. People bump themselves around sixty times a day and so it is impossible to notice a bump and transfuse it immediately. You have to wait and see if an ordinary, casual bump has caused internal bleeding. But once a bleed starts, the pain continues long after the blood transfusion has been given. The clotting component, Factor V111, takes at least seven hours to stop continuous bleeding and often as long as a couple of days. This means that internal blood, seeping out of thousands of capillaries, builds up pressure under the skin. Unable to break the skin, the blood soon has nowhere to go and pushes inwards. The result is not dissimilar to being squeezed tighter and tighter by a vice. Imagine your hand, arm or knee in a vice which is squeezed relentlessly for eight or ten hours. The pain would become unbearable..."

The disruption to normal family life seems almost unbelievable. Damon's haemophilia was to cost him two days in every week of his school life, and he was to receive, during his life, at least three blood transfusions a week and sometimes more, usually late at night.
In the early days, it was Bryce Courtenay's job to get Damon to hospital and stay with him while the missing Factor V111was transfused to allow his blood to begin clotting, usually a three hour round trip that took over the sleep patterns of both. Later, much later, after a bittler political struggle, ended only by the direct intervention of new Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, Haemophilics and their families earned the right to store blood products at home and self-transfuse....a right sufferers in other countriues had been granted long before.....a quality-of-life enhancer long and bitterly opposed by Australia's didactic medical profession.
That there is no love lost between Bryce Courtenay and the Australian medical profession in general is made very clear from Chapter 1. In fact, this whole book is a shouted objection, a bitter railing against fate, circumstance and bureaucracy, so vehement that it leaves the reader, too, quite battleweary. Nor is Damon's dying sentimentally or aesthetically sanitised for us. Aids is an ugly death, and Damon's is uglier than most...a drawn-out enduring to exhaust both subject and subjected until there is no beauty left in that lingering life.

Damon had intended, Bryce assures us, to write his own story, feeling that the real facts of aids need to be made clear to a misinformed world. Lacking the time, and it would seem, the skill, Damon's last request was for his father to `please write my book' and his father did, indeed, bury himself in this task as a grief-assuaging therapy before the rawness of that suffering, and the fury, had in any way abated..
So this is an angry book......anger at a young life expended, anger at things managed and mismanaged, anger at perceived shortcomings and weaknesses. And there is also the rawness of inevitable guilt, for do we not all see, when it is too late, how much better we might all have behaved...how DIFFERENTLY we could have performed?

Had I been Bryce Courtenay's editor, I would have suggested, I think, that he set this writing task aside for a spell....to take time to reflect and heal before diving headlong into this vitriolic saga.....but then this would not have been, truly, Damon's story,warts and all, would it?
Robin Knight

APRIL FOOL'S DAY was the hardest book Bryce Courtenay ever wrote, and it's also one of the hardest books I ever read. I started it (the first time) on a Friday evening and did nothing but read (and occasionally try to sleep) until I had finished it -- I couldn't imagine stepping out of the middle of the story into my own life. I've read this book, given it away, bought it again, several times: it's not a book you can forget.

Courtenay's son Damon was born in Australia with severe haemophilia. Along with the moving story of an afflicted but strong-spirited boy, Courtenay paints a bitter and angry picture of the Australian medical community at that time, steeped in paternalism and political expediency.

Several times a week Damon would bleed into his joints, and his father would take him to the hospital for infusion of Factor VIII to induce clotting. In other countries families were allowed to stock Factor VIII and infuse at home, minimizing both disruption to the family and permanent damage to joints. This was not permitted in Australia, to the extreme detriment of haemophiliacs and their families.

Worse than this, the screening and fractionation of donated blood in Australia did not at that time meet safety standards known and required in other countries. Damon contracted AIDS from the contaminated Australian blood supply and died of that disease on April Fool's Day in 1991.

The book is saturated with the author's bitterness, and the reader can't fail to walk his angry path with him. You WANT it to have been different, you WANT to find a justification or at least an exculpation for the medical mismanagement of Damon and the entire cohort of haemophiliacs in that time and place.

You'll find a celebration of Damon's spirit and his family's faithful support. You'll find love that fights tooth and nail for Damon. But you won't find forgiveness or exoneration, and if you're like me you'll think you should, and keep reading the book again looking for it -- in yourself if not in the author.

Courtenay's work (THE POWER OF ONE, TANDIA, WHITETHORN, etc) appears not to be well known in the United States, although he's highly regarded in his birth county (South Africa) and adopted country (Australia). APRIL FOOL'S DAY should be more widely known. It's a challenging read with a personal message the reader has to translate and tease apart. Read it for that challenge.

I bought this book when we lived in Australia from 1993/1994. I have since read the book over and over again and have lent it to family and friends under the strict mandate that they must return it to me upon completion. This is the most moving book I have ever read and it will be one that I will keep forever. I cried, I laughed, I cheered and I was inspired by Damon's courage and determination to not only live a normal life but to overcome the stigma associated with HIV/AIDs. Bryce Courtney has written a beautiful testimonally to his son's life. I hope every parent loves their child as much as the Courtney's did to not only let him live his life but to also allow him to die with dignity. His girlfriend, Celeste, was also amazing. How many of us could stand by our significant others knowing what she did about the ultimate outcome.

This book is a must read on everyone's list, I am only sorry that it is out of print.

This was strongly recomended to me by my Mum, and as I am still very young I didn't think our taste in books would be the same. I was very wrong! Bryce Courtenay has shown through the story of his son Damon that love and persistance can over come all evil. The thought of your own son not being 'normal' would frighten every parent, especially when you know very little about what is wrong with him. Courtenay allows the reader to experience everything as it is experienced by his family. I love how Courtenay isn't biased towards himself and doesn't make himself out to be some Super Dad. He knows he isn't perfect, just like the rest of us. He tells us about the hard days that he had and he is honest about them. He tells it as it is. I feel the Courtenay family and Celeste(Damon's Girlfriend)are amazing people that deserve all the good that comes to them in life. As I am a lover of true stories I would recomend this to all. And would like to tell you to always have a spare tissue. Not only do you feel the love that each character has for the next, but the hate, shame, and anger that is also felt.

This book was a very heart felt book and one in which leads the reader to feel for the family. Not only the pain and suffering that the family went through, but also the love that they had for each other. It is a real inspiration to anyone who reads it. You sometimes often wonder if you could deal with the same set of circumstances in your life. This book really brings out the heart in you and also shows you that you can basically make it through anything. This was a great book and I recommend it to anyone.

Before you bash me for not giving this book 5 stars, please listen to me first.

I truly loved this book. Bryce's family and the suffering that his son, Damon, went through nearly broke my heart and it was vividly written with plenty of emotion.

On the downside, the book was at least 30 pages too long. There were unnessecary parts, such as going on about the lighthouse light in the apartmenmt window and Damon's junk-bucket car that really got to me because they were repeated and dragged out too much for my liking. Also, the graphic descriptions of Damon's injuries and infections are not really something good to read with you lunch.

Also, I found the book to be a little bit overrated.

I don't consider it a masterpiece like "The Power of One" but it's definitely not a cold fish like Courtenay's "The Potato Factory," which bored me to tears. I'd rate it at about a 7.5/10 or 8/10, putting it in the same league as "Tandia."

I am a fan of Bryce Courtenay, and have read all his books. This one tells the true story of his last son, Damon, who was born with haemophilia and went through a very hard life, still one full of love and joy. I found myself crying for what happened to Damon, from the purple head episode in hospital to the AIDS he caught during a blood transfusion. And I do completely agree with what Damon said, whatever your problem is, HEALTH is a gift, the most precious one we possess, together with LOVE. The book is about love against the odds, the prejudice, the injustice of a health and political system in Australia in the 1980s; it is full of details and vivid images, and I can imagine how hard it was for the author to write about his own experience, and the suffering in trying to explain in a clear way what exactly happened to him and his family those days. Everyone who has been through a quite serious illness will love this book, as I did. Thanks, Bryce.