Customer Reviews

Confessions of an Internet Don Juan

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Confessions of an Internet Don Juan is a tour de force. Chambers doesn't just push the envelope, he gives it a swift kick. He may just well be one of the most inventive writers on the planet. His story has a worthy place in a society that perks up at the opportunity to pruriently observe or divulge all things private.

I had a friend suggest I read the "Stone Cabin", and I really enjoyed the book. I was excited to learn that Cameron Chambers had written a new book. I just got it today, and I really couldn't put it down. Anyone who has ever used an internet dating site, needs to pick up this book. A very sexy read. It was great to follow the adventures of Cast Hughes. I related to his character on so many levels. I would certainly recommend this book to anyone!

This book is a scream. If you have ever had an online date or been part of that scene you should read this. Cast Hughes is quite the character, and though he is a philanderer, he is a pretty likeable guy. It is a worthwhile book to read.

A Camus-like romp through the twisted fantasies of a totally narcissist middle-aged Romeo. A fun read.

I had no expectations when I first started reading Confessions of an Internet Don Juan, other than being amused by the title. However, I was immediately drawn into the story of Cast Hughes due to Cameron Chambers' direct (and sometimes raw) writing style. Hughes is an interesting, seemingly honest character who shares his experiences with on-line dating. Throughout, his vices and skewed sense of reality are in a constant struggle with his compassion and need for human attachment. Hughes talks about sex more than your average college fraternity - but he is likable. His exploits, no matter how bizarre and tawdry, still make him seem like an underdog who actually wants a meaningful relationship. For this reader, it is not clear if Cast Hughes gets the "happy ending" that he is looking for... Well done, Mr. Chambers.

Confessions of an Internet Don Juan is certainly a different and most entertaining read. It's definitely fiction, but I don't know that I would call it a novel - certainly not in the traditional sense. It is instead a series of confessions (I would call them vignettes because the word "confessions" implies a degree of guilt over improper behavior) by which our narrator, Cast Hughes, describes all of the post-divorce adventures he has had via Internet dating. For a self-described middle-aged failure with a history of mental illness, it's rather astonishing to learn that he has scored more often than a young Wayne Gretzky in Edmonton, mainly with foreign women. Cast does go into some detail on the roller coaster relationship ride he embarked upon after finally divorcing his ex-wife (who was apparently trying to poison him in the last year of their marriage). He doesn't proceed in a purely chronological order, but the overall structure of the book does lead us to an ending - at least insofar as our character's Internet dating days are concerned. There's a lot of humor in this book, as Cast encountered many a freak over the weeks and months following his divorce, from the sad and pathetic waif to outright liars to scam artists - and even a few women whose company he truly enjoyed. I'll just go ahead and tell you that there will be sex scenes, but I found nothing too terribly lurid.

I found Cast to be a somewhat slippery character to grab on to. I can't say I approve of his sowing his wild oats in such a wide-ranging number of fields, and I never got a firm handle on the true nature of his mental problems (although the reader certainly runs into a number of plausibly causative issues in his past). Even when he found the relationship he was after, love in the traditional sense seemed to be something of an after-thought in the story. On the other hand, he's a fairly decent guy for the most part, pretty sympathetic due to his past problems, and refreshingly honest. His humanity is easily revealed upon many an occasion. There is, for example, the case of the glamorous model who turned out to be a poor, starving mother with a disabled child. While he admittedly froze upon discovering this particular situation, Chase does make an effort to help them - and then wonders if he should have done more after the fact. Another poignant scene involves his interaction with a stranger he recognizes as mentally ill in some fashion, forging a connection with a man most of us would ignore. Cast can be naïve, though, sometimes sending money or plane tickets overseas to women he has never met, inviting them to visit him in Florida. This continues even after he's learned a lesson or two about scam artists and their techniques (it's never a good thing to learn that the woman you've been chatting with is the equivalent of a prostitute or - what's worse - a man pretending to be a woman).

Cast has a wonderful and telling theory or summation of men, and I imagine many will think he really hits the nail on the head when he talks about the two driving forces in most men's lives. He does wax philosophical from time to time, offering up several bits of the wisdom and perception he has gleaned from experience. So, as you can see, Confessions of an Internet Don Juan is not some shallow piece of tripe chronicling the sexual conquests of a modern-day great lover. I found the book candid, but not shocking or offensive. Yes, Cast has sex with more than his share of women, but I wouldn't call him a reprobate, and he's certainly no kind of sexual predator. Cast views women as beautiful creatures, not as objects. Shoot, the man doesn't even hold a grudge against his ex-wife, even after she tried to poison him.

In my opinion, the heart of this book isn't about sex at all; instead, it is about the need for companionship along life's journey. As such, you're going to get a lot more food for thought than you might be expecting from these pages, so don't judge this book by the title alone. Confessions of an Internet Don Juan is really a surprisingly worthwhile read.

Having read Cameron Chambers' prior books, I can say that I've enjoyed this one the most. By laying his main character (with all his endearing qualities and faults) bare, you feel you know him, and agonize at times over Cast Hughes' sometimes desperate and dangerous attempts to find true love. Great attention to character development is what I enjoy best about Cameron Chambers' writing.

The author does a more than adequate job of taking the reader along for a funny ride on the journery of a philanderer with a heart and a computer. This story made me laugh -- sometimes with and sometimes at the main character and his many online dates. I liked how each chapter was almost a self-contained novel or thought, while still working to tell the overall story. Made it fun summertime reading... and the sex didn't hurt either.

While is doesn't have the polish of David Sedaris or even Tucker Max, Chambers certainly makes up for it with a gritty, unashamed, apology from a similar gigolo loser, Cast Hughes. Confessions is a hard-hitting, at times very frank, exploration to the depravity of the self-asserted, slightly over-smart, and consequently under-stimulated, population of Anytown USA. Cast implies a tremendous loathing for his hometown, Jacksonville, FL, as a lackluster cow-town yet he is mired to the same inadequacies as he brags about his dates to Starbucks. I haven't read this sort of misguided folly since Holden Caulfield. It's not as light-humored as Sedaris, nor is it as fantastically implausible as Max, but Chambers venomously charges the reader with the same crime as his character. We are, it seems, inextricable.

Cameron Chambers is a very gifted writer who leaps in miles in the garden of creativity; uses the world of imagination as a small tool in his kitchen. A fountain of language, charm and humor in his latest book: Confession of an Internt Don Juan.
A novel that is a remedy for the tired and thirsty mind and soul, breaks all the routine in the modern literature. I hope to see this novel as a movie and I wish for the writer a long and prosperous career.