Customer Reviews

Sleepaway

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

To appreciate the collection of stories and essays in this book, you don't need to be familiar with life in the tents and canoes of the Poconos, but only with life itself. From old favorites like Margaret Atwood and Ursula Le Guin to lesser-known names like Josh Lambert and Terry Galloway, the authors bring their unique perspectives to an institution that stands in as a most natural microcosm of American life. While David Sedaris is hysterical as usual, it's the more serious pieces, like Atwood's tale of a life forever haunted by a childhood incident and Lambert's story of forbidden love -- and perhaps why such love should be forbidden -- that make the collection shine.

It's bittersweet to view the campfire nights of childhood with adult sensibilities. That's the poignancy of Eric Simonoff's Sleepaway. This compilation had me reminiscing about time spent at camp Magruder on the Oregon coast. The book was a terrific escape from our bleak mid-winter. It's filled with essays by literary heavy-hitters. A raw Margaret Atwood story rips into the unbearable pain of adolescence - (those of us deep in the throws of teenage self-absorbson were oblivious to the tragic figures loitering by the lakeside.) A hilarious ZZ Packer piece had me laughing so hard, I woke up my husband. Eric's introduction is sharp and funny. I wanted to hear more about, "The awkwardly named Josef and Betty Harlam Camp in rural Kunkletown." From the start, the introspective Sharon Olds poem places us mentally - as parents now, not kids anymore. Sleepway is a great read - or more aptly, it's a must read for parents ready to send their kids off to camp this summer. (Some of the applications are due already?)

It's summer and while I am too old for summer camp, there is nothing stopping me from reading about it. It is for this reason that I picked up "Sleepaway". Though I never attended a sleep-away camp, I knew that it would make me nostalgic for summer vacations. In that regard, it hit the spot!!

As the cover shows, this collection includes numerous famous authors as well as some unknowns. The selections range from fiction, to memoir, to graphic/comics. In that aspect, the book is very well-rounded. There are eerie stories such as Margaret Atwood's "Death by Landscape" in which two best friends attend summer camp but only one returns. There are humorous tales like Mark Oppenheimer's remembrances of spending summer at a nudist camp only to spend the following summer at a leftist camp. If you're looking for a story to pull at your heartstrings, Kevin Canty's "Flipper" and Josh Lambert's "The Brief Summer of Amir and Ariella" will do just that. "The Performance of Drowning" and "Apple Pie" had me completely captivated and I could easily have read a full novel based on both stories.

Of course, there were some duds in the collection. But these were very few and far between. I wold definitely recommend this as a summer read that fits perfectly into your beach bag.

The kind of book everyone can relate to. There are stories that take you back to camp or put there if you never had the experience. The friendships that last a life time in our memories are portrayed here in Sleepaway. This is the collection of camp stories that helps us remember how we grew up at away from home in the summer.

Interesting collection of summer camp stories, written by adults. As expected, some are more interesting than others. I would recommmend this boook.

Outside of the quite funny Sedaris entry, the balance of the book features essays from people who clearly did not enjoy or appreciate (then or now) the camp experience. None of them explains what was so special about their experiences (positive or not) that they would choose to write about them 20+ years later. Surprisingly boring and smug.

I thought this would be an interesting book to read. Who hasn't heard funny tales of summer camp?
Don't waste your time looking for humor in this book because it is so deeply hidden that I must have missed it completely. After reading, "I'm Not the New Me" by Wendy McClure, I had high expectations for her tale. It reads like the editor scraped most of her jubulant personality out of the writing & left a moderately interesting story behind.
Mark Oppenheimer's long winded story about going to a leftist utopia Quaker nudist camp interested me the way instructions for electrical appliances do.
Where are the good stories in the book? Well, I trudged through the entire thing hoping to find at least one and towards the end I did. The short story by James Atlas titled "Summer Memories of Egghead Camps" and the moving tale "How to Make it to the Promised Land" by Ellen Umansky saved this book from being a complete waste.
Perhaps someone from the North East region who attended an upper/middle class camp would disagree and be able to find a lot of common ground in this book.