Customer Reviews

A Perfect Night to Go to China

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

 

 

I picked this book up on a whim, intrigued by the title and encouraged by the fact that it got the Governor General's award. It's true the title has little to do with the book, but once I started reading, I couldn't stop. (It's not a very long book; it only takes about 1.5 hours to read, but it is so harrowing it feels longer.).

The author takes us into the mind of a person suffering the tortures of hell - the loss of his child through his own fault. It was the kind of mistake anyone could make (like "I'll leave him alone for 15 minutes while I run and get milk, he'll be OK" - except it wasn't milk, it was a trip to the neighbourhood bar to ogle a girl bad, so there can be no rationalizing, only self-loathing.)

I liked the fact that the main character was a superficial, unappealing guy. I liked the fact that he was short with his son putting him to bed, because he was so tired himself. That's real life. I liked the fact that after his son's disappearance he flips through his diary and it isn't filled with remembrances of his son, only with the remembrance that it was written when his son was there and is filled with inanity. His wife hates him after the disappearance and conveys this in the most bitter, true sentences "Don't call; I can't stand the disappointment when it's you." If he had been a nice guy the story probably would have turned maudlin. It didn't. The story, however gruelling, was not a bit sentimental.

The scenes where he hears his son whispering to him, leading him, where he has dreams so vivid they're hard to tell from reality, were all compellingly rendered. Thank God I haven't been through this but it felt true to me. When I finished the book I cried, not out of sadness but at the horror of it all, and then brought my 3-year-old into my bed where I could feel she was safe. Unlike Fiona, I would never recommend this book to someone who has lost a child. I wouldn't even recommend it to half the people I know who have a child; they worry enough already. In my opinion, this book is a tour de force, as the author makes a horror that most of us can't imagine invade every detail of life in a real and terrible way.

A Perfect Night to go to China was an interesting book that compelled me - because, as soon as I got into the first couple of pages, I thought, "Whoa." And curiosity sunk in.

Roman, the protagonist, makes the biggest mistake of his life one night. He leaves his little boy alone for fifteen minutes to stroll into a bar.

When he gets back, his son Simon is gone.

At this point, the reader can sense Roman's mental and physical descent. He becomes obsessed with finding his son, believing that his son is communicating with him. Whenever he sleeps, he slips into a world, seemingly of the dead. He sees his mother there and, even, Simon. At these times he visits Simon, holds him close, tells him he misses him.
Meanwhile, his wife doesn't want to see him, he gets fired from his job. His behaviour is strange and at times he does not seem all there.

I'll have to admit it was heart-breaking to read this book. You really get a sense of what it's like, losing a child. How it becomes the centre of your world. Everything seems trivial to that one big gap in your life. And what shocks Roman is that, at times, he momentarily forgets about Simon. For example, when he sees a menacing dog. He is surprised, shocked, maybe even a little disappointed in himself, that he could, even for a moment, forget about his son.

A Perfect Night to go to China was a clear and easy read. It isn't even 200 pages, and I found that I breezed through it. Gilmour's writing is accessible. I love the way he uses similes - you can always picture his images and he doesn't use obscure words like some authors do. His dialogue is also very striking.

The title still strikes me as a bit of a mystery - I can see why he named his title that, but I am just wondering, Why China?

All in all, A Perfect Night to go to China is recommended. I'd recommend it especially to parents who have suffered the loss of a child, although that isn't a requirement. I am only 17 years old and I found this book intriguing. It is different, and that's what makes it original.
This is some fine work.

I normally do not write reviews, although I do read a very large number of books each year. I am writing this review to hopefully offset the lower ratings given by others. This book, if any, deserves a higher average rating.

The book was astounding. Fabulous writing style, compelling narrative, and expresses and elicits more emotion in less than 200 pages than many other classics of much longer length.

Reading the book jacket I thought the story sounded depressing, and initially, after I started reading, I thought that the book was going to be like many other Can-lit books - gloomy, moody and dull. The story was definitely sad, but not depressing. It has a very realistic quality to it and such an excellent writing style that you simply get carried along with the narration. Once I had started it, I could not put it down.

I certainly understand that not all of us will enjoy the same books, but the two people that gave this book only one star puzzle me beyond words.

Jim

Certainly the premise is "harrowing" as the publisher says: a father tucks his child into bed, dips out for a wee drink and returns home to find the child is gone. The disappearance of a child is a story that we're all too familiar with...just as we are with the enormous sense of panic and terror we imagine that a parent goes through at a moment such as this. The problem with David Gilmour's book is that the main character seems comparatively (and unaccountablly) untouched by the experience. I turned to my friend and asked "Wouldn't you be tearing your hair out at a moment like this? I know I would." Instead, the premise seems merely to have provided a pretext for the character to assume a kind of jaded, anti-heroic world weariness that populates so many novels of the post modern era, but has blessed little to do with what we might reasonably expect to be the real experience of losing a child. It is less about the feelings and thoughts of a parent who has lost a child than it is about the texture and tone of the narrator's own mind - all rather precious stuff as it turns out, and finally irrelevant to the circumstances of the novel.

A much better book (one that strangely enough got very little notice in the Canadian press, never mind the GG nomination it so richly deserved) was Bill Gaston's "Sointula". I highly recommend it. You won't be disappointed.

d

This book starts out like a punch to the face. The narrator's son disappears after his father goes down the block for a couple of drinks once he thinks his boy is asleep. The father is tortured not just by his disappearance but by the fact that it was his fault.

As the ordeal stetches on, the narrator, Roman becomes numb though the pain of the loss dominates his thoughts and actions. At one point, later in the book, in a conversation with his wife, he says that he always thought a woman would be the great love of his life but in fact it was his 6 year old son.

This is a short read and I finished it in less than a day. As a parent of young boys, the first half of the book greatly affected me and I couldn't put it down.

The problem I have with the novel is that it doesn't really go anywhere in the second half. I lose some sympathy for the lead character and I get the sense the autor didn't know how to finish.

So, I do recommend it but with some reservations.

I too must counteract all the negative reviews of this book. After closing the last page I felt I could finally breathe and then, I sobbed. It tore a strip right off me. The man writes in completely unsentimental, sparse prose. You and the narrator are naked together - warts, broken bones, shattered psyches and everything. No, he does not wail and flail himself over the loss of the boy. Worse, he allows himself to descend into a world of self-loathing, death and delusion. Gilmour has found an original voice in literature and should continue with it. I loved this book and have already passed it on to someone I know will love it too.

Parents: Imagine the feeling you'd have..."wait here son...I'll be right back..." Minutes later...Gone! Great idea for a novel. Too bad this one came out.

I'm not really sure how books like this make the best seller lists. The only thing I can imagine is that the word "China" in the title is an immediate signal to unsuspecting consumers to "buy"...maybe learn about some sort of slave trade involving US kids? Hey, why not? It sure would have made for a better read than Gilmour's latest work.

Basically, the book is about the emotional torment a parent goes through under such duress.... 200 pages of "woe is me...why does this happen to our people". I guess the contract called for another book. This is the author's 200 page fulfillment of that. Hopefully, there's a clause in the contract that deducts for a) lack of plot; b) characters we could care less about; c) no redeeming quality for wasting two days reading in a person's life.

My only question remains: I can't get my life spent reading this novel back; but can I get my money back?

This is a self-indulgant, obsessive novel that is more concerned
with the mind of the narrator, rather than truely expressing
the grief of a lost child. I couldn't get past the obsessive
mind games the narrator plays, and I had little sympathy for
his plight. It isn't that I place blame on the loss of his child,
it is that he is so in tune with his misery that he inflicts
on everyone around himself (and sees himself as so much of the
victim) that it was difficult to sympathize with his plight.
And why doesn't his wife have a first name? There is literary
game playing that goes on here, more narrative tricks with mood
and atmosphere then a real attempt to reach the reader and engage
him somewhere. The ending is pointless. I most unimpressed with
this novel.