An Affair With The Moon

by David Gilmour

In his first two novels David Gilmour took a candid look at romantic and carnal love.  With this newest work he makes a surprising departure and turns his attention to a different kind of love.

"He was a bad dog that needed killing."  That's how the grisly death of Pascal Charleville was described to police after a weekend visit at the country estate of Harrow Winncup took a nasty turn.  Few people were Harrow had been courting tragedy for years.  He was a bright, beautiful boy with a penchant for strong booze and drugs; he also had the unfortunate fate of being the only son to a very wicked mother.

Also at the house that weekend was Christian Blackwood.  He and Harrow grew up together, went to Paris together, drank together, went out with girls together, and decided what to do with Pascal Charleville's body together.   An Affair with the Moon is ultimately the story of their relationship--and its astonishing aftermath.  It is a story of how one friend turned the others tragedy into his advantage; it is a story of friendship, but it is also a story of revenge.

204 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Librarian 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.

Reviews

[Dennis Bolen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mr. Gilmour is one of the scant few word workers in this country who can do the task, make you read about something you wouldn't otherwise. Mr. M. Richler was probably our best, who got me reading about the Arctic decades ago. Amazing. Mr. R. Davies had me fascinated about The Circus, though not past his first book. David Gilmour grapples with long-term faulty-friend syndrome, a love-hate, co-dependent jerk-off relationship with not much to recommend itself. I read it with eagerness.

This is an engrossing, if flawed, attempt to put sense to a wonky buddy-history that takes too long to wrap and thus winds into clever aspects of betrayal, antipathy, family treachery, dangerous driving
and heavy drinking. As in his thoroughly excellent 'How Boys See Girls' and the only okay first novel 'Back on Tuesday', Mr. Gilmour also explores the giddy terror of middle-aged sex panic, with hilarious and poignant and important yields.

The book could have been tighter; some elemental writing mistakes (Will someone please rip the word `suddenly' out of the dictionary and fling it into the sea?), and the disease suffered by the narrator sometimes leaks off the page and fouls the reader's stomach a little too much for my liking. But in all, one of the readables.

[Hillary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I forgot I read this book over the summer, too! See, my memory is kind of off... anyway, an interesting tale about this writer/substitute teacher and his on again/off again friendship with a childhood friend. Mostly, I felt like it was about fucked up choices people make, and how some people are always reliving their past. There were a couple of "no fucking way" moments (in a good way), and I liked how the author brought me along on his fucked-up journey, but there were also a couple of times I was ready to be done with the story. So, I liked it and would recommend it for certain occasions (maybe a roadtrip?).