praise for The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Danforth's writing style is multilayered in the best way, with a gradual, deliberate accretion of details that creates a resonant whole. This is a book that invites lingering - and not only on the scenes of young love that might become dog-eared at the library - though, if you're like me, you'll speed through the story, unable to tear yourself away from Cameron's meticulously rendered life...Describing a book as "important" is a compliment, but it can also seem to detract from its literary quality - as if its significance is more about its message than its sentences. The Miseducation of Cameron Post is indeed an important book - especially for teens growing up today in communities that don't accept them for who they are. But it is also a skillfully and beautifully written story that does what the best books do: It shows us ourselves in the lives of others.
Danforth is a talented wordsmith who recounts these experiences not only with impeccable phrasing but emotional and visual clarity, drilling down into individual moments and dwelling there in slow motion to help readers experience Cameron's hopes and fears...[she] has crafted a story that's likely to be remembered long after readers of any sexual orientation have put it down.
With echoes of Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle emily m. danforth's debut novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post is perceptive, nuanced, and beautiful. Or maybe it's enough to just call it a new coming-of-age classic.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
In Cam's head, Danforth has written the perfect young-adult stream of consciousness. Her descriptions are teenage-awkward and feel organic and uncensored...In a surprising way, Cam avoids religion-bashing, although she employs humor selectively to get her point across. Yes, "curing gayness" is absolutely bogus, but she can eventually relate any Bible-thumper's faith to the peace she feels from a mountain jog. It's a peace that resonates through the book's final pages.
...for LGBT youth and outsiders everywhere, Cameron's story will take on epic resonance.
You'll love it if... you've ever struggled to come to terms with a part of yourself that you fear others might not accept. Miseducation is incredibly well-written, and stays light-hearted throughout, even as Cam face serious social prejudices and her own internal dilemmas.
...Cameron Post is funny and sincere and real, and I felt like I was a complete part of her world throughout the whole epic tale, a world that I was sad to see go when I reached the 470th page. Emily Danforth has crafted a masterpiece, and I truly cannot recommend it enough.
starred reviews
★The Miseducation of Cameron Post
The story is riveting, beautiful, and full of the kind of detail that brings to life a place (rural Montana), a time (the early 1990s), and a questioning teenage girl...Danforth's story gains even more complexity and dimension from [a] shift [halfway through], further developing the political, religious, and coming-of-age themes introduced in the first half...Cam's reckoning with her sexuality develops through a series of vignette-like early chapters that focus on the girls that come and go in Cam's life...creating narrative moments that will have teens rereading the sexy bits like an earlier generation did with Judy Blume's FOREVER.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Runs the gamut from heart-rending to triumphant, epic to mundane...Carefully crafted symbols provide a backbone for the story's ever-shifting array of characters and episodes, each rendered in vibrant, almost memoir-like detail...Handled with particular nuance...Even when events take a dark and gut-punchingly inevitable turn, the novel remains at its heart a story of survival and of carving out space even in a world that wants one's annihilation. Rich with detail and emotion, a sophisticated read for teens and adults alike.
★The Miseducation of Cameron Post
[An] ambitious literary novel, a multidimensional coming-of-age...There is nothing superficial or simplistic here, and Danforth carefully and deliberately fleshes out Cam's character and that of her family and friends. Even the eastern Montana setting is vividly realized.
★The Miseducation of Cameron Post
When 12-year-old Cam learns that her parents have died in a car accident, her first reaction is relief that they will never know that just hours before she was kissing her best friend, Irene. Shortly after the funeral, her conservative aunt moves to Miles City, MT, to help Cam's grandmother with the caregiving, but all the churchgoing and discipline they can marshal throughout Cam's teen years can't prevent her from exploring her sexuality further, finally falling for Coley Taylor, a "straight" girl who wants to experiment. When they eventually get caught, Coley tells all, blaming everything on Cam, and Aunt Ruth sends her niece off to God's Promise, a conversion therapy school and camp. It is here that Cam meets gay teens like herself, and she begins to deal with the guilt and trauma of her adolescence, not through the pious teachings of the camp but through the love of her friends. This finely crafted, sophisticated coming-of-age debut novel is multilayered, finessing such issues as loss, first love, and friendship. An excellent read for both teens and adults.
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