Back On Tuesday

I bought this at a deep discount thinking it was one of Toronto author, David Gilmour's, more recent books. In fact this is a newer edition of his first novel and was written in 1986. Gene is a guy whose breakup with his wife, J., is hitting him like a ton of bricks some months after the fact. So how does he deal with it? He assaults his landlord, kidnaps his daughter, flies to Jamaica, drinks a helluva lot of overproof rum and interacts with some very marginal characters over a period of eighteen hours - Under the Volcano condensed. It's the story of a good man who behaves like a bad boy. I found myself, from my 2008 vantage point, wanting to shake some sense into him but if I look back through the mists of time I was pretty wild in the 80s as well. His adventures are amusing but the idea of his little girl left alone in a sketchy hotel room kept niggling at me and prevented me from chuckling at his misbehaviour. I liked reading it but suspect that I would have enjoyed it a whole lot more if I'd read it when it was first published.