What do you think?
Rate this book
Back on Tuesday
Book by Gilmour, David
221 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
40 people want to read
About the author
David Gilmour
68 books77 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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 to 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. His next book, The Film Club, was a finalist for the 2008 Charles Taylor Prize. It became an international bestseller, and has sold over 200,000 copies in Germany and over 100,000 copies in Brazil. He lives in Toronto with his wife.
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 to 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. His next book, The Film Club, was a finalist for the 2008 Charles Taylor Prize. It became an international bestseller, and has sold over 200,000 copies in Germany and over 100,000 copies in Brazil. He lives in Toronto with his wife.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 27, 2018
This book reminded me so much of Scorsese's movie "After Hours". Gilmour's protagonist (nothing like Griffin Dunne's character let's be clear) disappears into the Jamaican night quite possibly never to emerge. His 5 year old daughter left sleeping at a mostly deserted Jamaican Hotel is a mere afterthought as he attempts to make some sense of his wrecked personal relationship with the child's mother. The next pretty girl is always beckoning however and a taste for alcohol doesn't help our characters ruminations. Excellent read from Gilmour who was rightly run out of town for proclaiming that he didn't see any need to teach Chinese or Women writers. With hindsight one can see some of this attitude in this mostly relentlessly male novel. Excellent read though.
March 10, 2012
Having spent so much of my life reading Victorian fiction, I’ve missed out on lots and lots of new books and new writers. David Gilmour is not a particularly new writer! “Back on Tuesday” which is in print again with McArthur and Company, was first published in 1987 - quite a while ago!
David Gilmour is a Canadian writer who won the 2005 Governor General’s Award for Fiction for his novel “A Perfect Night to Go to China.” He’s also written “Lost Between Houses”(1999), “An Affair with the Moon”(1993) and “How Boys See Girls” (1991).
I was impressed by “Back on Tuesday.” It is an extremely well-written, readable book. The style is concise, and simple; the imagery is unique, and, at times, unsettling.. It is also a neat example of what can be done with first-person narrative. The story is told entirely from Gene’s perspective and Gene, I have to say, is not a guy I really want to get to know!
As the novel opened, I liked Gene. He’s a bit crazy, a bit of a drinker, and a bit mixed up about relationships. At least, that’s how he originally appeared to me. As he told his story, I gradually
began to hate the guy! As I was alienated from his point of view, I became increasingly interested in how other people viewed him. There are clues about how others, particularly his wife and child, see him, but they are hidden within that all encompassing narrative of Gene’s.
He’s the one telling the story, and he doesn’t give up this right to anybody.
As Gene lives out his various nostalgic and alcoholic “On the Road” fantasies in Jamaica, I was increasingly annoyed with him. Quite honestly, I was becoming deeply worried about his daughter Franny, who was sleeping in a hotel room in Jamaica, unattended. The jerk!
Gilmour’s novel reminds me somewhat of Robert Stone’s writing about uppers and downers, and the self-destructive impulse of people who have no idea why they are here on this earth (do any of us really know?). It also portrays people who are as lost as those in F.Scott’s Fitzeralds’ novels.
A love story? I didn’t find it to be one. Gene is so self-involved that he seems incapable of loving a toad, let alone is beautiful daughter, and way-too-forgiving ex-wife. He is lonely, though. And the last lines of the novel resound with sad and haunting loneliness.
Not exactly the Arnoldian idea of love holding things together in a godless world.
David Gilmour is a Canadian writer who won the 2005 Governor General’s Award for Fiction for his novel “A Perfect Night to Go to China.” He’s also written “Lost Between Houses”(1999), “An Affair with the Moon”(1993) and “How Boys See Girls” (1991).
I was impressed by “Back on Tuesday.” It is an extremely well-written, readable book. The style is concise, and simple; the imagery is unique, and, at times, unsettling.. It is also a neat example of what can be done with first-person narrative. The story is told entirely from Gene’s perspective and Gene, I have to say, is not a guy I really want to get to know!
As the novel opened, I liked Gene. He’s a bit crazy, a bit of a drinker, and a bit mixed up about relationships. At least, that’s how he originally appeared to me. As he told his story, I gradually
began to hate the guy! As I was alienated from his point of view, I became increasingly interested in how other people viewed him. There are clues about how others, particularly his wife and child, see him, but they are hidden within that all encompassing narrative of Gene’s.
He’s the one telling the story, and he doesn’t give up this right to anybody.
As Gene lives out his various nostalgic and alcoholic “On the Road” fantasies in Jamaica, I was increasingly annoyed with him. Quite honestly, I was becoming deeply worried about his daughter Franny, who was sleeping in a hotel room in Jamaica, unattended. The jerk!
Gilmour’s novel reminds me somewhat of Robert Stone’s writing about uppers and downers, and the self-destructive impulse of people who have no idea why they are here on this earth (do any of us really know?). It also portrays people who are as lost as those in F.Scott’s Fitzeralds’ novels.
A love story? I didn’t find it to be one. Gene is so self-involved that he seems incapable of loving a toad, let alone is beautiful daughter, and way-too-forgiving ex-wife. He is lonely, though. And the last lines of the novel resound with sad and haunting loneliness.
Not exactly the Arnoldian idea of love holding things together in a godless world.
April 7, 2013
I'm moving so cleaning up my bookshelves and in this case re reading this remarkable first novel. Years ago I lent it to everyone getting divorced. But it is more than that. Just breath taking. A lonely drunken protagonist in love. The bars, the love, the loneliness, the pain, the children. There are funny moments for sure but it is the pain that I remembered and felt again so well described. He is a really good writer but his first book (and after this, I read everything)is still my favourite and in my mind his best book. On my personal short list of favourite novels.
July 1, 2009
After a drunken fight with his ex-wife, Eugene kidnaps his daughter and takes her to Jamaica. Once there, he gets hopelessly drunk (as Gilmour characters so often do), and takes a midnight walk down a starlit road full of rejects, bikers, and hostile locals, wondering what the hell to do next. In lesser hands, this novel would be maudlin trash. In Gilmour's hands, it's brilliant and surprisingly funny.
Read
July 28, 2011Savagely funny and touching ... all events unfold within a day for the protoganist who runaway to Jamaica with his five year old after a flare up with his exwife in Toronto ... he fumes, he drinks, he agonizes, he regrets, he reminisces, he befriends a youthful grey eyed woman, a coffin maker, a black Napoleon and a host of other fascinating encounters in the Jamaican night ... an insightfully fast and light read.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews