What if you woke up one morning to discover you had turned into a giant cockroach? What if you were the sole survivor of a shipwreck on a desert island? What if you found out that you weren’t just a bullied boy living with your relatives in the suburbs but also a famous wizard?
Fiction often begins with a premise that drives the story – but the premise is not the story. We don’t read Kafka’s Metamorphosis as a guide to navigating life as a cockroach, or Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe for survival tips (though both stories are quite helpful in this regard). And then there’s the ever-abiding Harry Potter series.
The premise in Michael Thompson’s All the Perfect Days, though, is the story: a small-town doctor suddenly develops the ability to predict the exact number of days his patients and others have left to live. During an appointment with an elderly patient, the number four flashes in Dr Charlie Knight’s brain. Four days later, the patient slips over in the shower and dies. Other patients, other numbers, then friends, acquaintances, the cashier at the supermarket – more numbers, some small, some large. A blessing, or a curse?
As every Spider-Man aficionado knows, with great power comes great responsibility. What should Charlie do with this knowledge? Should he inform the person concerned? Can he prevent the death from happening? (Spoiler: no, he can’t.)
These dilemmas play out over the next 300-and-something pages, and everything comes to a head when he learns the number for his ex, Gen.
The problem is that I can’t quite believe in the characters. Charlie Knight is the doctor who never left his hometown of Marwick, a never-never sort of place like Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls, where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Old flame Gen has returned after seven years in London and a swanky job in advertising.
At one point, Charlie says real life isn’t like a Hallmark card, but the plot of this novel feels a lot like a Hallmark movie, with prose to match: characters’ brows “furrow”, their eyes “sparkle” – especially Gen’s – and they say things “with a mischievous grin”. They ponder God’s plan out loud and no one scoffs.
Did I suspend my disbelief while reading all this? Not really. Charlie discusses his power with a doctor from a nearby town and finds that until recently she had the same power, only to lose it at the same time Charlie acquired it. Maybe, she muses, it’s like a virus, and she passed it on to him.
I’m no doctor, but even I know viruses don’t work like that. Nonetheless, I read the whole book in a couple of days. Two of the blurbs on the cover call this novel “thought-provoking”, another calls it “profound”.
It’s neither of those things, but I amiably followed Charlie, Gen and the quirky townsfolk of Marwick to the end, and enjoyed their story more than I should have.
All the Perfect Days, by Michael Thompson (Pantera Press, $39.99), is out now.
