The Half You Don't Know: Selected Stories [Mass Market Paperback]

Peter Cameron (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1998

In this collection of short stories, Peter Cameron describes lives of quiet desperation: people trapped in unfulfilling commitments, overcome by their own indifference, confronted with life's inevitable changes. With remarkable grace, acuity, and humor, he examines the small dramas of ordinary life and brilliantly captures the serene poignancy of daily struggles.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For the past decade, Peter Cameron has been increasingly esteemed as one of the most accomplished practitioners of the short story. The 18 stories in The Half You Don't Know support this view. They are culled from two earlier collections, both now out of print, plus two new stories. Cameron's fiction is smart and delicate. He is an attentive and keen observer of the half-hidden, domestic world that most of us take for granted. He has an ear for what is deeply felt but left unsaid.

From Library Journal

These 19 stories by noted prose stylist Cameron (The Weekend, LJ 7/94) skillfully demonstrate the effect of the unknown on human relationships. Whether the situation is ironic (a woman sneaks into her ex-husband's swimming pool), poignant (a twin refuses to take off his sunglasses), or comical (one character is fired for getting a haircut), the reader is continually aware that something is withheld without necessarily learning what that is. Cameron effectively engages the reader in the dilemma presented by each story, but since all but two of these pieces have been published in the author's earlier collections (e.g., Far Flung Stories, LJ 9/15/91. o.p.), this selection is most appropriate for larger fiction collections lacking the previous volumes.
Joshua Cohen, Mid-Hudson Lib. System, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Plume (January 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452277329
• ISBN-13: 978-0452277328
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,321,320 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SUPERB STORIES, December 25, 2001

By 

MOVIE MAVEN (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Half You Don't Know: Selected Stories (Mass Market Paperback)

Peter Cameron is a superb novelist. If you want proof, read "The Weekend" or his fantasia on love life in New York City called "Leap Year." The short stories collected in "The Half You Don't Know" are the first stories of his that I've read. And now I plan to buy his other two collections. What a wonderful writer. His characters are so full and rich, even when Cameron tells you very little about them. He is especially good with young people like the boy in 'Homework' whose dog, Keds, "got smashed by some kid pushing a shopping cart;" or Julie in 'Fear of Math' who begins a casual affair with her summer school calculus professor in order to pass the course; or Mark in 'What Do People Do All Day' who brags that his monogram is MTV, or Patrick in 'Fast Forward' who agrees to accompany his friend, Alison, to Maine where Patrick will pretend to be her fiance, so that, supposedly, Alison's mother can die happily.

Comparisons are odious, but I have not found so much delight in discovering a writer since I first read the stories and novels of David Leavitt. Cameron and Leavitt are not at all alike in their writing styles but they both do have such a warm, loving compassion for all of their characters, especially the ones who do not know how to solve their problems, but nevertheless, keep trying to find a way out.

I especially treasure a story called 'Slowly' in which a young widow and her late groom's brother try to move on with their lives, to comfort one another and to complete the grieving process.

Cameron always leaves the 'half you don't know' as a mystery. He refuses to fill in all the blanks with his characters. They are our relatives and friends. They are us. We laugh with them and when they are in trouble, as they often are, we empathize greatly with them. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some of Cameron's Finest Stories, October 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Half You Don't Know: Selected Stories (Mass Market Paperback)

The collection includes some of Cameron's finest short stories: "The Secret Dog," "Slowly," "Jump or Dive," and others. The collection also includes the short story he eventually turned into the novel "The Weekend."

Cameron has an eye for details, dialogue and simple and original descriptions that make you say, yeah, that's exactly how it is, how come I never thought of it that way before?

I did find, however, that the stories are best read during separate sittings. Otherwise, the similarity in tone and characterizations begins to wear a little bit thin; and the sweet, poignant, almost hapless characters start to seem kind of passive-aggressive.

My girlfriend at College used to have a big crush on Cameron back when he was wowing the campus with his poetry in the school literary magazine. I was jealous of him then. Now I'm just jealous of his ability to write such great short stories.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nuanced bittersweet glimpses into all-too-human hearts, September 14, 2002

By 

Stephen O. Murray "Stephen O. Murray" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Half You Don't Know: Selected Stories (Mass Market Paperback)

Although I prefer Peter Cameron's novels (Leap Year, The Weekend, Andorra, The City of Your Final Destination), he first made a name for himself in the mid-1980s with wistful short stories. All but two of the stories in this collection were in his first collection (One Way or Another). The additional stories focus on gay characters with a background of AIDS death and were first published in the_ Yale Review_. "Deparing" is the mbryo of his novel _The Weekend_ and one of three stories in the collection ("Homework" and "Excerpt from Swan Lake" are the other two) that were selected for O. Henry Awards.

Seven of the seventeen stories were first published in the _New Yorker_. Somewhat offbeat children and young adults of both sex experience the oddness of adults and the complicated relations among the adults they observe who are dying or have survived divorce, or are thinking about getting married. Not much happens and (as with many contemporary literary stories) the stories tend tostop rather than be wrapped up. Life and its uncertainties will go on for the somewhat perplexed, somewhat perplexing and never-fulfilled characters.

Almost every story has an observation or dialogue that makes me laugh out loud. My favorites are two stories about young New Yorkers visiting relatives in Maine with a possible marriage partner ("Fast Forward" and "Nuptials and Heathens," the latter with the best absurd line in the book) and one about a young woman who has to pass calculus to begin Columbia MBA program in the fall ("Fear of Math"), though I was not sorry to have read any of the fourteen stories.