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Art & Books Books

The Perfect Order Of Things

THE PERFECT ORDER OF THINGS by David Gilmour (Thomas Allen), 222 pages, $27.95 cloth. Rating: NNN


In David Gilmour’s new set of stories, a first-person narrator takes stock by revisiting the sites of the most important events of his life.

It’s a good read. Gilmour’s obviously grown from the swaggering novelist who in his early works thought we cared about his sexual obsessions. Here, examining the critical moments that made his narrator the man he is, Gilmour meditates on the meaning of love, jealousy and friendship in locales ranging from cottage country to the CNE and all the way to California.

The winner of the Governor General’s Fiction Award for 2005’s A Perfect Night To Go To China has terrific writing chops. The chapter about the narrator’s father’s suicide is told with devastating precision. Elsewhere, he shows a gift for conveying simple emotion. In Another Day In Paradise, for example, the narrator eats in front of a mirror to battle his feelings of loneliness.

But why weigh in on the cultural meaning of the Beatles or the influence of Leo Tolstoy or what it’s like to attend a Film Festival party, all from the point of view of an unreliable narrator? I’d be more interested in what Gilmour, who worked as an arts journalist, has to say about these things, especially since these chapters tell us nothing about the narrator.

Structuring a book around going back to the scenes of your personal crimes is a great idea, but it ultimately fails. Lacking a narrative arc, the collection seems indeterminate, as if Gilmour simply can’t make up his mind if he’s writing autobiography, fiction or essays. He’d probably say “None of the above” and claim that in The Perfect Order Of Things he’s pushing the fictional envelope.

But I get the feeling he’s just not ready to accept the vulnerability that comes with writing a full-on autobiography.

Write Books at susanc@nowtoronto.com

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