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Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven |  | Author: Susan Jane Gilman
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $13.99
Buy Used: $4.99
as of 9/9/2010 08:58 PDT details
You Save: $9.00 (64%)
Seller: bluesky_books3
Rating:  123 reviews
Sales Rank: 41862
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.9 x 1
ISBN: 0446696935
Dewey Decimal Number: 910
EAN: 9780446696937
ASIN: 0446696935
Publication Date: February 8, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780446696937 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, March 2009: While this latest memoir from Susan Jane Gilman (former Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress) appears to be a saucy account of international sexcapades, it quickly reveals its whip-smarts, sucking you into a story that brilliantly captures the "ecstatic terror" of gleefully leaping from your comfort zone--and finding yourself in freefall. It's 1986, and newly minted ivy league grads Susy and her friend Claire have never left the U.S. when (inspired by a "Pancakes of Many Nations" promotion during a drunken night at IHOP) they hatch a plan to circle the world, starting in China, which has just opened to tourists. From the moment of arrival, they're out of their depth, perpetually hungry, foolish, and paranoid from relentless observation. Claire, who carries the complete works of Nietzsche "like a Gideon Bible," seems more capable than Susy until encounters with military police, hallucinatory fevers, and a frantic escape from a squalid hospital expose cracks in her psyche that utterly derail their plans. Rich with insight, dead-on dialogue, and canny characterization, Gilman's personal tale nails that cataclysmic collision of idealism and reality that so often characterizes young adulthood. Be prepared to wolf down the final hundred pages in one sitting. --Mari Malcolm
Product Description
"This is riveting stuff . . . unputdownable."
--O, The Oprah Magazine
In 1986, Susan Jane Gilman and a classmate embarked on a bold trek around the globe starting in the People's Republic of China. At that point, China had been open to independent backpackers for roughly ten minutes. Armed only with the collected works of Nietzsche and Linda Goodman's Love Signs, the two friends plunged into the dusty streets of Shanghai. Unsurprisingly, they quickly found themselves in over their heads--hungry, disoriented, stripped of everything familiar, and under constant government surveillance. Soon, they began to unravel--one physically, the other psychologically. As their journey became increasingly harrowing, they found themselves facing crises that Susan didn't think they'd survive. But by summoning strengths she never knew she had--and with help from unexpected friends--the two travelers found their way out of a Chinese heart of darkness.
UNDRESS ME IN THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN is a flat-out page-turner, an astonishing true story of naïveté, friendship, and redemption told with Susan's trademark compassion and humor.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 123
 Knowing More Than the Narrator July 27, 2010
Scott Lackey (New York, NY)
Despite the incendiary title, this is an intriguing memoir which recounts two mid-1980's Brown grads trip to Red China, a few years prior to 1989's Tiananmen Square protests.
Much more than a travelogue, the book recounts how these women deal with primitive conditions, their personal relationship and their own tenuous grip on reality while living in frequently unfriendly and often unfamiliar territory.
Undress Me" is good, but not great. It's always troubling to know more than the narrator as a story unfolds...despite the fact that it's an attempt to portray naivete.
Engaging and hard to put down July 12, 2010
Sharon
I very much enjoyed reading this book. I usually read fiction but a friend recommended this book so I gave it a try. I read it in a few days (and I usually fall asleep at night reading). I had to know what would happen. It took me a while to get into it (it starts off a bit slow), but once it grabbed me I was fully hooked and couldn't stop. I definitely recommend this book as a quick summer read. You might enjoy it during a luxurious domestic beach vacation!
 Please prepair before traveling! July 7, 2010
A. Posner (Curacao)
What an entertaining book. Traveling like this must be a real nightmare. Once you are back home and save you can maybe look back and laugh, but while you are experiencing this kind of adventure, you really do not know if you will survive.
I got a really nice feeling about the helpfulness the two young women received from the people in China. Americans should really not expect everybody to speak English. What made it more difficult of course was not being able to read the signs.
Even if you will not ever go to China, you will still like this story.
Great book! Horrid cover! June 20, 2010
janateach (Georgia)
This book is so poorly covered - Ms. Gilman is not the sort to romp around looking like Victoria Beckham in Milan. She does a great job of showing how she truly came of age in what begins as a hilarious memoir of a trip round the world and ends as an escape from Communist China. Ms. Gilman's mediations of class, American cluelessness, and learning to navigate another culture were spot on. She views herself sharply and is honest about some of her foibles and unforgivable actions. Read it to learn about becoming an adult, China in the eighties, and kindness from strangers.
An honest travel memoir June 17, 2010
Amie-June Brumble (Seattle)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Despite the odd name and the unattractive hardback cover (I'm shallow, sue me), it was a good read. I've traveled a LOT. I've gone all the way around the world, up, down, and sideways. But most travel memoirs tend to be pretty sparkly, put a positive spin on things, and don't report the hardships (or rebrand the hardships as comedic). This travel memoir is about two girls traveling to China, and how the whole experience slowly but surely unraveled until the situation became a serious emergency.
I think I liked it because it helped me come to grips with some of the unpleasant things I've experienced in my travels (unwittingly hurting someone's feelings in the cross-cultural morass, new "friends" harassing you for money, travel partners not turning out to be who you thought they were, feelings of obligation that can never be fulfilled). Before, I'd worried that having those feelings made me a cynic, and that I was missing out on the beautiful things. In reality, that's every bit as much of the experience as the beautiful parts are. Reading this book, in a sense, gave me permission to feel that way. Anyone that's traveled to places outside their comfort zone will identify with this story.
The book's not a downer. It just provides a nice and much-needed contrast to the peppy Travel-Channel flavor of most books in the genre. Gilman doesn't condone any of the choices she made or actions she took as a young woman in China in the 1980's, she just lays it out and says "this is how it happened." The ending is a touch unresolved, but travel is like that too.
As Thomas Jefferson said, "Traveling makes a man wiser, but less happy."
Showing reviews 1-5 of 123
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