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treehuggeravl 's review for:
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
by Emily M. Danforth
Let me start by saying this book should NEVER be classified as YA - the ONLY thing YA about it is the age of the protagonists.
Let me also say that, if I ever do end up writing (ahem, finishing) a story or a book or a memoir, if I could be even one-tenth as talented and successful in my word-crafting as Danforth proves she is in this debut novel, I will feel as though I have accomplished something great and worthy and incredible.
This book transcends so much of my ability to describe it's awesomeness that I'm really at a loss for how to review it. I had a late night of not being able to sleep last night, so I basically powered through the last 200 pages in the last few hours of yesterday and the first few hours of today.
I think this book is kind, smart, and important, just like we were taught in "the help". Aside from the queer theme (read: queer being anything other than the very narrow definition of heterosexuality and gender roles that is considered the cultural 'norm' and reinforced through perpetual portrayal in most of the media...I'm liking this new word in my vocab, and the discussions we had around it during 'safe zone' training last week [the timing of which sort of blew the issues of this book into monstrous proportions, because, well...WE HAD JUST TALKED IN DEPTH ABOUT ALL OF THIS F*CKED UP STUFF!]), the crafting of the characters and their situations was so true and intense as to be painful. There were so many "ohmygodyesmetoo" or "otherpeoplethinkthattoo?" or "holyshitsheclimbedinmyheadrobbedmythoughtsandwrotethemdown" moments as to be eerie.
If you are like me (and I recognize that not everyone is...but if you're reading this, you may just be, at least a little..), this book will break your heart. At least 100 times. And you will shake your head, and form shocked, disdainful "o" shapes with your mouth as you read, and you will press your lips into a hard thin line as you read some more, and you will have to consciously unclench your jaw, and you will feel, and feel, and feel.
That's about all I can say about it. You just hafta read it. Be ready to question your assumptions, especially if you've not had a lot of experience with queer culture. Be ready to enjoy some seriously awesome early 90s music references. Be ready to start to question your own motivations, "sins", and "icebergs" (you'll get it when you read it).
Supa quick plot summary for the future me in the unlikely event that I forget why, in 10 years, this book was so powerful: Eastern Montana, regular girl, maybe a little tomboyish, gets caught doing something that makes her super Christian town incredibly uncomfortable, gets sent to be "reformed" (so. many. ways. reformed. re-formed). Personal discover, triumph, and strength.
I read this so fast that there are 3 more weeks left on my library loan, if anyone in the Triangle wants to borrow.
“I felt all the ways in which this world seemed so, so enormous--the height of the trees, the hush and tick of the forest, the shift of the sunlight and shadows--but also so, so removed.”
― Emily M. Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post
But if renting all those movies had taught me anything more than how to lose myself in them, it was that you only actually have perfectly profound little moments like that in real life if you recognize them yourself, do all the fancy shot work and editing in your head, usually in the very seconds that whatever is happening is happening. And even if you do manage to do so, just about never does anyone else you’re with at the time experience that exact same kind of moment, and it’s impossible to explain it as it’s happening, and then the moment is over.”
― Emily M. Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post
...and there I was sending all the wrong signals to the right people in the wrong ways. Again, again, again.”
― Emily M. Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post
“I told myself that I didn't need any of that shit, but there it was, repeated to me day after day after day. And when you're surrounded by a bunch of mostly strangers experiencing the same thing, unable to call home, tethered to routine on ranchland miles away from anybody who might have known you before, might have been able to recognize the real you if you told them you couldn't remember who she was, it's not really like being real at all. It's plastic living. It's living in a diorama. It's living the life of one of those prehistoric insects encased in amber: suspended, frozen, dead but not, you don't know for sure.”
― Emily M. Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post
“Everything was heightened the way it always is when summer is slipping away to fall, and you're younger than eighteen, and all you can do is suck your cherry Icee and let the chlorine sting your nose, all the way up into the pockets behind your eyes, and snap your towel at the pretty girl with the sunburn, and hope to do it all again come June.”
― Emily M. Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post
“On the screen it rained and rained confetti, for minutes, and that glitter-rain, plus the cameras flashing and the lights from the billboards and the awesome mass of the crowds in their shiny hats and toothy smiles, made the world pop and shine and blur in a way that makes you sad to be watching it all on your TV screen, in a way that makes you feel like, instead of bringing the action into your living room, the TV cameras are just reminding you of how much you're missing, confronting you with it, you in your pajamas, on your couch, a couple of pizza crusts resting in some orange grease on a paper plate in front of you, your glass of soda mostly flat and watery, the ice all melted, and the good stuff happening miles and miles away from where you're at.”
― Emily M. Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Let me also say that, if I ever do end up writing (ahem, finishing) a story or a book or a memoir, if I could be even one-tenth as talented and successful in my word-crafting as Danforth proves she is in this debut novel, I will feel as though I have accomplished something great and worthy and incredible.
This book transcends so much of my ability to describe it's awesomeness that I'm really at a loss for how to review it. I had a late night of not being able to sleep last night, so I basically powered through the last 200 pages in the last few hours of yesterday and the first few hours of today.
I think this book is kind, smart, and important, just like we were taught in "the help". Aside from the queer theme (read: queer being anything other than the very narrow definition of heterosexuality and gender roles that is considered the cultural 'norm' and reinforced through perpetual portrayal in most of the media...I'm liking this new word in my vocab, and the discussions we had around it during 'safe zone' training last week [the timing of which sort of blew the issues of this book into monstrous proportions, because, well...WE HAD JUST TALKED IN DEPTH ABOUT ALL OF THIS F*CKED UP STUFF!]), the crafting of the characters and their situations was so true and intense as to be painful. There were so many "ohmygodyesmetoo" or "otherpeoplethinkthattoo?" or "holyshitsheclimbedinmyheadrobbedmythoughtsandwrotethemdown" moments as to be eerie.
If you are like me (and I recognize that not everyone is...but if you're reading this, you may just be, at least a little..), this book will break your heart. At least 100 times. And you will shake your head, and form shocked, disdainful "o" shapes with your mouth as you read, and you will press your lips into a hard thin line as you read some more, and you will have to consciously unclench your jaw, and you will feel, and feel, and feel.
That's about all I can say about it. You just hafta read it. Be ready to question your assumptions, especially if you've not had a lot of experience with queer culture. Be ready to enjoy some seriously awesome early 90s music references. Be ready to start to question your own motivations, "sins", and "icebergs" (you'll get it when you read it).
Supa quick plot summary for the future me in the unlikely event that I forget why, in 10 years, this book was so powerful: Eastern Montana, regular girl, maybe a little tomboyish, gets caught doing something that makes her super Christian town incredibly uncomfortable, gets sent to be "reformed" (so. many. ways. reformed. re-formed). Personal discover, triumph, and strength.
I read this so fast that there are 3 more weeks left on my library loan, if anyone in the Triangle wants to borrow.
“I felt all the ways in which this world seemed so, so enormous--the height of the trees, the hush and tick of the forest, the shift of the sunlight and shadows--but also so, so removed.”
― Emily M. Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post
But if renting all those movies had taught me anything more than how to lose myself in them, it was that you only actually have perfectly profound little moments like that in real life if you recognize them yourself, do all the fancy shot work and editing in your head, usually in the very seconds that whatever is happening is happening. And even if you do manage to do so, just about never does anyone else you’re with at the time experience that exact same kind of moment, and it’s impossible to explain it as it’s happening, and then the moment is over.”
― Emily M. Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post
...and there I was sending all the wrong signals to the right people in the wrong ways. Again, again, again.”
― Emily M. Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post
“I told myself that I didn't need any of that shit, but there it was, repeated to me day after day after day. And when you're surrounded by a bunch of mostly strangers experiencing the same thing, unable to call home, tethered to routine on ranchland miles away from anybody who might have known you before, might have been able to recognize the real you if you told them you couldn't remember who she was, it's not really like being real at all. It's plastic living. It's living in a diorama. It's living the life of one of those prehistoric insects encased in amber: suspended, frozen, dead but not, you don't know for sure.”
― Emily M. Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post
“Everything was heightened the way it always is when summer is slipping away to fall, and you're younger than eighteen, and all you can do is suck your cherry Icee and let the chlorine sting your nose, all the way up into the pockets behind your eyes, and snap your towel at the pretty girl with the sunburn, and hope to do it all again come June.”
― Emily M. Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post
“On the screen it rained and rained confetti, for minutes, and that glitter-rain, plus the cameras flashing and the lights from the billboards and the awesome mass of the crowds in their shiny hats and toothy smiles, made the world pop and shine and blur in a way that makes you sad to be watching it all on your TV screen, in a way that makes you feel like, instead of bringing the action into your living room, the TV cameras are just reminding you of how much you're missing, confronting you with it, you in your pajamas, on your couch, a couple of pizza crusts resting in some orange grease on a paper plate in front of you, your glass of soda mostly flat and watery, the ice all melted, and the good stuff happening miles and miles away from where you're at.”
― Emily M. Danforth, The Miseducation of Cameron Post