This latest novel by Peter Cameron pulls off the difficult task of making a difficult, troubled, antisocial narrator completely sympathetic and lovable. James Sveck, an eighteen year-old outsider is intelligent, philosophical, and yes, even "charming" (as the front cover suggests) but he has problems showing all this to the outside world. James has been accepted to prestigious Brown College, but he has no desire to go, because people, particularly people his own age distress him. In his words, "I just don't enjoy being with people. People, at least in my experience, rarely say anything interesting to each other. They always talk about their lives and they don't have very interesting lives. So I get impatient."
It would be easy to detest someone that brutally honest and snobbish. And yet I found myself continually cutting him slack, in part because I felt sorry for his obvious social anxiety and, also because his character flaws are interesting and complicated in the grand tradition of Holden Caufield. Like Holden, James rejects those who try to help him (his parents, his psychiatrist), believing them to be more interested their own wants than in listening to him. Like Holden, he has one family member who truly gets him, in his case, his grandmother. Like Holden, his few attempts to reach out to the world fail--often spectacularly as when he tries his hand at expressing his attraction to a coworker and when he is chosen to go to Washington D.C. to represent New York at a national student program about the government.
With beautiful metaphors and a true sense of "voice," Peter Cameron tells a compelling story about a young man failing to thrive in the modern world. You may not know first hand the kind of anxiety and depression that James feels, but this story will help you identify with, understand, and empathize with him.
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