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80 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A slow fuse on a big powder keg, January 26, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I almost stopped reading this book after the first couple of chapters. Boy, am I glad I kept going! Susan Jane Gilman has written a memoir that begins in deceptively languid fashion but ends in an explosion of surreal and shocking events.
Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven starts off very slowly. If you're not paying close attention to what's going on, as I was not, the book seems like yet another "clueless recent college graduate with backpack" travel journal. Even the book's title is somewhat misleading; it made me expect a cobbled together collection of exaggerated, drunken adventures in developing countries.
I was wrong, very wrong.
Small, seemingly insignificant, things begin happening to Gilman and her traveling partner. As patterns emerge, the story begins to take on threatening, even malevolent, overtones and the pace quickens. What began as two innocent and idealistic girls taking an around-the-world trip turns into an uncontrolled descent into chaos, fear, and personal destruction.
Sure, this all sounds like a plot for a bad Roger Corman horror movie--especially that last bit!--but Gilman manages to make everything unfold in a mesmerizing yet believable manner. She writes in an engaging, flowing style that truly brings the story to life. Gilman's experience as a journalist has given her a talent for capturing key details of people and places, so that even the parts of the book that may have been embellished don't feel out of place or totally implausible.
The story also benefits from twenty years of hindsight. Gilman occasionally breaks away from the main narrative to comment on the things she thought and did at the time of the story, when she was twenty-one. In these asides, Gilman deftly skewers a lot of the self-serving beliefs held by the backpack-youth hostel-railpass crowd both then and now.
Bottom line: Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven starts out slowly but rapidly gains momentum as the author begins to realize that she has lit the fuse on a gigantic powder keg. When the big explosion finally happens, you won't be able to stop reading. Four stars.
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And now, some books I was reminded of by this book:
WARNING: this link is a possible spoiler
Bad Trips
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
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42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ironically, noirishly satisfying!, February 16, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
What happens when two recent female college graduates decide to circumnavigate the world on a shoestring in 1986, starting in the tourism-challenged People's Republic of China? Let's just say that "Innocents Abroad" doesn't begin to describe it.
Gilman and her pseudonymous companion, Claire, are arm's-length friends when they embark on the adventure of a lifetime, inspired by the map on an IHOP place mat. At some point in our lives, each of has probably pursued a brash dream with someone we hardly knew, but in Gilman and Claire's case, the consequences surpass anything they and their apprehensive families could have imagined. Beyond their naivete and the sheer foreignness of the environment the two young women plunge into, at 21, Gilman increasingly finds herself forced to deal with her friend's rapid descent into psychosis (which, she points out in the afterword, may have been the product of antimalarial medication). Along the way, she encounters some unforgettable characters: a generous, English-speaking Chinese man who befriends them in the hope that they will help him defect; a clueless, lumbering German misfit; a free-spirited American mother and her two rambunctious sons; a Chinese waitress who prepares Western food for homesick backpackers; a German hunk whose kindness matches his considerable romantic appeal; and a Canadian nurse who rallies to her aid at her time of greatest need.
As compelling as the people she meets is her take on the country itself. The picture she paints of 1980s post-Kissinger China is rich and textured, frequently rendered with delicious irony and dark humor. The bravado with which she handles various encounters with Chinese culture, cuisine and government authorities is both unnerving and astonishing. (Her description of a rural hospital should be an eye-opener for anyone who hasn't traveled in the Third World.)
Part travelogue, part coming-of-age story, part memoir, this book is at once entertaining, revealing and insightful. As China's well-documented rise to industrial superpower inspires headlines (and dominates the U.S. national debt), this delightful, if occasional discomfiting book provides a vivid reminder of how far our largest creditor has come...and how impetuous, reckless and ultimately resourceful young people in dire circumstances can be.
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18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Innocence or arrogence?, March 27, 2009
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Beware of making travel plans, what to do after college plans, any kind of plans based on the placemats at the International House of Pancakes. One night in 1986, fueled by post graduate giddiness and a large amount of alcohol Susan Jane Gilman and friend Claire decide to circle the globe, starting with China (newly opened to any type of tourist activity), one of the sites on IHOP's placemat. Making sure they have the necessities...the complete works of Nietzsche, an astrology love guide, endless optimism and visions of hostel travel the two embark on a romp that quickly goes awry. Were it not for the peril of venturing into areas of China closed to foreigners, the lack of funds, constant hunger, the threat of arrest and a general lack of awareness of the seriousness of their situation this might be a fun trip. Gilman manages to tell the story with wit and no small amount of hubris. If I wasn't so irritated by her devil-may-care attitude I might have enjoyed it more. Well written with great dialog and a keen eye for detail , but this book really rubbed me wrong even knowing it all ended well.
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