Customer Reviews

The Weekend

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Peter Cameron's gifts as a writer are plainly on display in this beautiful novella of friendship, grief, hope, and honesty. The language is gorgeous (his background as a poet puts him many levels above most writers of the time) and his characterizations are realistic, almost painfully so at times. It's a shame that more people haven't discovered this extremely talented writer. He's right up there with Michael Cunningham, whose book "The Hours" has a similar calm and introspective tone. That isn't to say the two books are the same--just that they handle some rather deep and philosophical ideas without becoming indulgent or heavy-handed. "The Weekend" is a deceptively easy read, but it will leave you thinking and wondering long after the last page is turned.

One summer weekend in upstate New York, three friends gather on the anniversary of the death of the man who was their centerpiece. The widowed boyfriend's new lover and a surprising dinner guest disrupt the memories and push the tension of the trio into clarity for each as they struggle to regain something lost. Cameron's exquisitely written novel weaves flashbacks into the story, giving the whole an almost lazy summer day atmosphere, just like what the weekend was supposed to be for the characters. Not only is the story beautifully told, but the personal epiphanies of the characters are almost startling in context of the tale, and the human truths about loss and perception are quite universal and sharply rendered. This is a book to treasure.

This is a very strange, quiet and unsettling book that I would recommend reading. It's like reading a foreign film: minimal plot, GREAT character development and lines that seem to jump off the page at you. And, after it's all said and done, you kinda feel like hugging the book. A definite read!

I wish I could write like Peter Cameron. Such economy of language, such insightful observations. His writing is exquisitely simple and clean, his voice assured. He is a world-class writer and it's hard to imagine how his beautiful new novel, The Weekend, could be any better. On a warm-weather holiday, in a country house in upstate New York, three old friends--art critic Lyle, wealthy young couple Marian and John--gather on the anniversary of the death of Tony, a gay man with AIDS who was John's brother, Lyle's lover, Marian's friend. As Lyle has invited Robert, a young artist/waiter in whom he has taken an interest, Marian invites her summer neighbor, the older Laura, because...well, because Laura speaks with an Italian accent. The introduction of these two outsiders--along with the lurking memory of the departed Tony--charges everything with a shifting tension that darts between jealousy and longing, nostalgia and recrimination. Each indolent activity--a swim in the river, a nap in a shadowed guestroom, a walk in the woods, a dinner al fresco--shivers with the recollection of happier times now lost. Cameron's light touch transforms this tense midsummer scene into a provocative social comedy worthy of Chekhov. When Robert overhears Marian tell John that she resents his being at their "family" gathering, what can he do? Continue the weekend charade as if he hadn't heard himself dished? Acknowledge and act upon this new information? The incident jacks the anxiety level up several notches, not only for Robert but for the reader as well: we now know whose secret cards are on what whispered table. When Marian later mentions at dinner that Robert should really use grape scissors to snip the stems rather than pull at the green globes one by one, we know that she's really not thinking about fruit utensils. And Robert knows it, too. The whole scene crackles with a tortuous politeness...and then explodes. Evening becomes night, more wine is consumed, actions spring from close to the emotional bone. Behavior so sensible in the late, late hours can seem less reasoned as dawn approaches and the buzz wears off. Characters pretend to be asleep when they're awake, pretend not to register insulting things they've overheard. Such conduct might give rise to a guilty conscience in individuals with more conscience. But each of The Weekend's players is so self-absorbed, so concerned with image, that appearance becomes much more important than reality. Cameron seems to be asking the reader, "When are you really you?" Lyle watches his beautiful young date Robert speaking with a stranger on a train and wonders, "Does he look like that when he talks with me?" Robert sees Lyle at the table with his old friends and a similar question arises: "Who is Lyle? he wondered. It was strange to see someone you have only known alone begin interacting with other people, for that somebody known to you disappears and is replaced by a different, more complex person. You watch him revolve in this new company, revealing new facets, and there is nothing you can do but hope you like these other sides as much as you like the side that seemed whole when it faced only you." The author has sometimes been called a minimalist. His prose descriptions may be succinct, but they're highly suggestive as well. Robert sees Marian asleep and realizes that "her face looked different...as if a veil of tension had been lifted, something you could not notice until it was gone." Dialogue is served up with "said" or "asked," rather than "expounded," "gushed," "posited," "queried" or "sniped." The reader is thus allowed to imagine the tone, the delivery. Conversations read like conversations, not like written words exchanged between fictional characters on a page. Cameron's facility with language is such that it appears effortless. Lyle observes: "Sleep veils some people; it takes them away. But sleep only stilled Robert; he lay there present and calm. There were no grinding teeth, no thrashing, no twitching, no groaning or snoring: it was an amazingly simple, peaceful sleep. It suggested to Lyle that if you unwound Robert like a wrapped mummy, you would find nothing bad, nothing rotten or broken or unnecessary, just everything, down to the bones of him, clean and perfect." The passage is emblematic of the author's own "clean and perfect" prose style: no bells and whistles needed, nothing superfluous, nothing distracting. His sentences possess an almost musical quality: lines scan, their rhythms wonderfully buoyant, metered out in a soothing and seductive manner. Cameron's short story collections (One Way or Another, Far-Flung) and debut novel (Leap Year, originally written as a magazine serial) have all contained gay characters, gay themes. His early story, "Jump or Dive," is included in the Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories, and he works at New York's Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. Still, he's always seemed a bit outside the gay literary scene. (He's never been included, for example, in any of the Men on Men anthologies.) I suspect that's because his sights are set somewhat higher: he has opted to write literature rather than gay fiction, which, as Larry Kramer has pointed out, is often only "about getting laid. How I came out. How I fell in love with the handsomest dick in the world." Cameron's characters may be gay, but they happen to be gay...or happen to be straight. They are not relentlessly so. Consequently it's very easy to forget about their sexuality as they go about living the rest of their lives. And you note the significance when the author does mention their sexuality, because you haven't had it in your face page after page. I recommend this fine book to you with great enthusiasm. It is a deceptively simple novel, containing such depth and complex richness that it welcomes more than just a single reading. The Weekend is a quiet masterpiece.

Peter Cameron has succeeded in creating a world filled with rich, human characters caught up in the tangled web of love and loss. The story moves along quickly over the time span of one weekend spent in the country. By far, Cameron's strength is his use of dialog. He masterfully conveys what his characters are feeling in a clear and emotional way. We come to learn so much about these people from what they say to each other and what they struggle to articulate and define for themselves.

Realistic and not at all overly sentimental, The Weekend will soon be a major motion picture. I hope the film lives up to the book!

I read this book a few years back and decided to read it again recently. I remembered loving this book when I first read it and my second read confirmed why I loved it so much. It's just that Peter Cameron has an amazing way with words. In this book, he makes you understand each character by digging deep into their emotions and thoughts. This story feels so real and beautiful, even though this book's characters experience loss and discover the worst things about themselves. This truly is a great book.

The best book I have ever read in my life.The language is so beautiful.... Syntax, words, pause, everything is beautiful. It is such a heart-healing book.

This is one of the best books that I have ever read. In fact, I re-read it every few years. The setting and the relationships between the characters are intense. Definitely a powerful message. This is one of the few books that I recommend to everyone I know.

I picked this up in hardcover and started reading it as soon as I got home. Cameron drew me into the weekend and this small masterpiece stayed with me for months afterwards. I would find myself remembering a particular line or a scene; he has a real gift for creating lasting images in the reader's mind.

I'd recommend it without reservations; I have "Andorra" but have not yet read it, and am halfway through "Leap Year", which I think is quite good, too.

I know that some readers don't care for this author, but I enjoy his work and look forward to reading more.

i bought this little hardback at an australian gay book store 3 years ago cos it was discounted and i liked the cover. having just finished it this weekend, i have to say i am glad i did buy and not read it then. it is a simple worded story. no obvious pompous imagery or over the top philosophy (though i did cringe a little during the dinner exchange, which bordered on the preachy). yet under the uncluttered language hides a tumultuous cast of characters with an equally tumultuous sense of self. they all present that sturdy, friendly, "oh, i like you" facade in front of strangers, only to crumble when confronted by themselves and, unwittingly, others.

what is absolutely wonderful is the handling of the idea of truth (absolute and relative, pun intended) and the sense of your place in the world. in trying to figure out who you are, where you are and how you are doing in this thing we call "life", peter cameron has shown us a few different, very disparate examples. they are for us to look at, laugh at, identify with or mistake, like for chaikan@hotmail.com, where looking at it as explicitly gay literature has made him/her miss the point totally, and which depth was never insisted, but loomed very darkly over all that seemed frivilous and flippant.