A Perfect Night to Go to China - Hardcover

Gilmour, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0887621678 ISBN 13: 9780887621673

Publisher: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2005

Synopsis

Winner of the 2005 Governor General's Award for Fiction

This astonishing novel - unlike anything Gilmour has ever written before - begins with every parent's worst nightmare: the disappearance of a child. A father makes a casual error of judgement one evening and leaves his six-year-old son alone for fifteen minutes. When he returns the child is gone and three lives are changed forever. Has the boy been kidnapped? Spirited out of the country? Is he dead?

The story that unfolds is told by the novel's narrator, a television host named Roman, who searches for his son through the city and through the underworld of dreams and tries to bring him back. Pursued by an unshakeable conviction that his son is speaking directly to him, Roman begins to enter a haunting relationship with the missing child and his own conscience. In the meantime, his behaviour becomes increasingly erratic and he is rejected by his grieving and angry wife, eventually fired from his job, and shadowed by a persistent policeman who thinks Roman is hiding the child. Written in the clear, elegant prose Gilmour is known for, A Perfect Night to Go to China is a completely absorbing and original work of fiction. It sets up a harrowing premise and doesn't let up until the last surprising page.

About this title

About the Author

David Gilmour is a novelist who has earned critical praise from literary figures as diverse as William Burroughs and Northrop Frye, and from publications as different as the New York Times and People magazine. The author of six novels, he also hosted the award-winning Gilmour on the Arts. In 2005, his novel A Perfect Night to Go to China won the Governor General's Award for Fiction. He lives in Toronto with his wife.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I went out again that night.... I looked in garden sheds, in parking lots, in backyards. I whispered his name down dark stairwells. I said, "Simon, are you there?" A dog chased me from a back porch, snarling, pulling on a chain. A drunk staggered out of the darkness at me. I peered into an abandoned car. Nothing, not even a sensation. I tried to feel him, not think him, but I kept wondering, Where would I take him? Fifty-eight pounds. Where would you go? It had to be nearby. But when I stopped in front of a house or started up a driveway, I could feel a sort of invisible door close... He was slipping away from me. I said, "Don't go, Simon. Don't go."

Edition details

• Publisher: Thomas Allen Publishers
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0887621678
• ISBN 13: 9780887621673
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192