Peter Cameron (1) (1959–)

There's something poetic in Cameron's writing here that kept surprising and delighting me. Keen observations told in direct but simple phrases. I don't agree with the reviewers on amazon.com who dismiss this book because it fails their accuracy test- to me it is a work of fiction- not a travellog, a closed world that reflects our feelings, not facts. For me it is an extremely sad book dealing with desperation, grief and loss, lies and self-deception. The way the narrator manipulates, or show more attempts to manipulate, the world around him, particularly women, unnerves me. Yet it does so because this touches on the truth of how many smart but desperate people interface with the world. Reading this book makes me want to read other books by Peter Cameron. show less

Cameron's book is truly a fantastic book. Not only is the story well done, but the writing is brilliant. Someday This Pain Will be Useful to You is the story of James, an 18 year old boy trying to figure out, well, life. He's not sure he wants to go to college, he's not really sure about much of anything, except that he wants to be alone and he hates people his own age. Cameron handles everything perfectly -- the several time married mother, the distant and yet controlling father, the show more implied crush on the older coworker, and the love that James is seeking without really knowing it. I say perfectly because he manages to capture how our lives (the lives of the family, of teenagers, of college students, of everyone) are not perfect at all. James' view is one that anyone can relate too, not just teens. This isn't just because he's such a universal character in many ways, it's also because Cameron proves to be a sublime writer. James is smarter than many people (perhaps smarter than we are) and while in many books (YA or otherwise) this would be a turn off, it's the opposite. James doesn't lord it over his readers, just the people he encounters. And often, it's not even on purpose. While this book isn't about me, reading it I felt it had been written for me. It's an incredibly emotional (and emotionally driven) story about what it's like to grow up when you're already halfway there. show less

Peter Cameron’s hauntingly enigmatic novel, What Happens at Night, chronicles the adventures of an unnamed couple from New York who have ventured to a frozen outpost in the northern reaches of an unnamed European country to adopt a baby. The couple is childless—in the past the woman has suffered through several failed pregnancies. She now has cancer, and the couple’s search for a baby has pushed them to this foreign extremity because everywhere else they have looked, her show more diagnosis—indeed, she is gravely ill—has disqualified them as potential adoptive parents. After a lengthy journey, the final leg of which is completed by train, they emerge into the nocturnal wilderness surrounding an apparently abandoned train station but manage to secure a taxi to take them to the Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel. Cameron establishes the setting of his story hazily, but with many intriguing particulars. It is a world that is at once eerily familiar and yet profoundly alien, with a bleak, snow-blanketed landscape and an indefinite timeline that leaves us with the impression that the train has carried the couple not just miles northward but also decades into the past. Like the town, the hotel recalls the threadbare opulence of a previous era, and its inhabitants equally seem to have fled into the pages this book from an assortment of mid-twentieth-century novels. Livia Pinheiro-Rima, a woman of late middle age who apparently lives at the hotel and periodically sings for the amusement of the hotel’s guests, takes a meddlesome interest in their situation. For the couple, very little goes as planned. On their first day in the town, there is a mix-up, and the taxi, which is supposed to take them to the orphanage, instead deposits them at a clinic run by a local “healer” named Brother Emmanuel. Tensions mount as the woman’s health deteriorates, and the man, who eventually emerges as the novel’s focus, finds himself dealing on his own with the many challenging obstacles standing in the way of him taking the baby, a boy, which he names Simon, home with him to New York. Repeatedly, he expresses doubts about his ability to be a competent and loving father. However, with his confidence buoyed by the indefatigable Livia Pinheiro-Rima, he makes his choice and acts. The novel has a dreamlike, enchanted quality (reminiscent of, though very different from, the author’s earlier masterpiece, Andorra) that Cameron invokes by never quite allowing us to pin down exactly why these people behave the way they do. A shadowy yet beguiling tale of the risks people are willing to take for love, What Happens at Night provides further evidence—as if any were needed—of Peter Cameron’s exceptional genius. show less

Following the death of his wife and daughter Alexander Fox moves to Andorra to start his life anew. He quickly falls under the spell of this tiny isolated country that moves at its own pace, its ancient stone buildings and people who come from everywhere and nowhere. In Andorra's capital, La Plata, he meets an Australian couple, Mr. and Mrs. Dent, who have moved to this strange place seeking a fresh start for reasons of their own. He also becomes involved with the Quays, a family of show more aristocrats, well established on La Plata's outskirts in their estate, called Quayside. But as Fox builds new relationships his old life comes back to haunt him, and he begins to understand how difficult it is to re-invent oneself and leave the past behind. Andorra is a mesmerizing and seductive novel. Peter Cameron's prose is a delight to read, memorable and evocative and gently rhythmic, much like the lapping of waves upon the shore. The story unfolds slowly--building mystery and suspense but so subtly that you hardly notice how gripping it is. If you prefer fiction with all the questions answered and everything tied up in a neat little package, then maybe Andorra is not for you, but if you don't read this book you're missing a brilliant work by a master novelist. show less