The Miseducation of Cameron Post in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Dec 25, 2018 Sarah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, american-fiction, young-adult-fiction, lgbtqia, christmas-2019-wish-list

TW: Depictions of homophobia, esp. in religious settings, including conversion therapy; parent death, too, but from the first sentence of the book, and more like a setting than an event.

I think this might be the most important YA novel I've ever read, for me at least. It is gut-wrenching (though uplifting by the end, like most YA novels), and I had a very difficult time reading it, perhaps partially because I was back in my hometown for the holidays while I was trying to read it, and I was pain ...more

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Jul 13, 2019 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 100-best-of-21st-c, reason-atheism-and-religion, coming-of-age

I really enjoyed this book. It was difficult to read at times, because it’s very emotional, and there are some dark emotions. And that’s for me, straight cis me, with parents who loved me unconditionally. I just kept thinking about my daughter; how could anyone do something like this to someone like her? Why wouldn’t they love her unconditionally, too? Maybe it’s harder to read this as a parent, because a lot of this book is about parents and guardians and the often flawed decisions they make.

Fr I really enjoyed this book. It was difficult to read at times, because it’s very emotional, and there are some dark emotions. And that’s for me, straight cis me, with parents who loved me unconditionally. I just kept thinking about my daughter; how could anyone do something like this to someone like her? Why wouldn’t they love her unconditionally, too? Maybe it’s harder to read this as a parent, because a lot of this book is about parents and guardians and the often flawed decisions they make.

From the blurb (and from the movie trailer, which I didn’t know anything about but which was mentioned in the blurb), one would think this is about a lesbian sent to a “re-education” camp. And it is. But that doesn’t happen until the second half of the book. I wasted a good deal of time trying to figure out which kid on the cover is Cameron, which is Coley, and is the boy Jamie or Brett orTy? Turns out the cover image is from the movie, and Jamie and Coley and Ty don’t even feature in the movie. (The kids on the cover are Cameron, Jane, and Adam. Chloe is Cameron, of course.)

The first half of the book is set in Miles City MT and the author grew up in Miles City (and is now married to a woman), so I think it’s safe to see his book as semi-autobiographical. It kind of bothered me that the “bad guys” of the story - Aunt Ruth and Lydia and Mrs Taylor - are all women, but if it’s semi-autobiographical (and that’s just an IF, I don’t really know) then it’s moreorless true and so that’s just how it was.

This is marketed as YA, but it doesn’t read like YA at all. It’s a coming-of-age story with a young protagonist, but it’s much slower and more complex and darker and introspective than most YA.

The scenes are often quite beautiful.

The weeds alongside the highway were partially gilded in death from the frosts at night—parts of them gold and ochre, dried and curled, but the rest of the weeds still green, hanging on, trying to keep growing.

Danforth has an observant eye for a scene, and she’s brilliant at conveying that same scene with words.

The last line is so haunting:

And there was a whole world beyond that shoreline, beyond the forest, beyond the knuckle mountains, beyond, beyond, beyond, not beneath the surface at all, but beyond and waiting.

Words I had to look up:
Strawberry pretzel salad - not a salad at all, more of a cheesecake made with crushed pretzel crust, sweetened cream cheese, and topped with strawberry jello & sliced strawberries. It Looks pretty good!

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Jul 01, 2012 Abby Johnson rated it liked it

I liked it, but it doesn't feel YA... Reads like an adult book featuring a teen character. There's a distance between the reader and Cameron that's more typical of adult novels. I'd recommend to fans of Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone. ...more

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Sep 14, 2014 Melle rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ya, family-dynamics, christian, fiction, teen, 1990s, teen-romance, self-harm, christianity-evangelical, family

This was a fantastically good book for the rich, diverse, and sympathetic characters and for the difficult but honestly- and thoughtfully-covered subject matter. This is a Judy Blume caliber story about the difficulties of being a teenager but especially a teenager who is trying to navigate her identity as a young adult asserting her independence, as a woman feeling sexual attraction and affection toward other women, as a member of a small and socially-conservative community, as a member of an ü ...more

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Oct 14, 2018 Lacey Louwagie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-pop-sugar-challenge, youngadult, literary-fiction, lgbtqi

If you're reading this book because you're interested in the conversion therapy aspect of the storyline, you have to be very, very, very, very patient.

Even though the jacket flap and everything else out there makes this out to be a book about conversion therapy, you have to get through half the book before Cameron ends up at God's Hope. Before that, it's a general queer coming of age in Montana story, with experimental kisses, encounters with more experienced and "out" lesbians, first love, chan If you're reading this book because you're interested in the conversion therapy aspect of the storyline, you have to be very, very, very, very patient.

Even though the jacket flap and everything else out there makes this out to be a book about conversion therapy, you have to get through half the book before Cameron ends up at God's Hope. Before that, it's a general queer coming of age in Montana story, with experimental kisses, encounters with more experienced and "out" lesbians, first love, changing friendships, etc.

I had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it's hard not to become impatient when it takes SO long to get to the hook. It's almost as if this book wanted to be two different novels, and it in fact FEELS like two different novels, with different themes, settings, and casts of characters in the first and second halves of the book. The movie pretty much just reduces the whole first 200 pages to periodic flashbacks, and keeps the conversion camp experience almost verbatim. And as far as I'm concerned, it works.

On the other hand, I think I understand why this book had such an elaborate set-up. It speaks to the dearth of queer stories from rural America, and I have a feeling that Danforth wanted this book to be all things to all rural, queer youth -- that she felt compelled to capture an experience that is mostly lacking in both young adult and queer literature, and so she put it ALL in there, everything it meant to grow up gay in Montana in the 90s, with the specter of conversion therapy hanging over it all and eventually manifesting.

The character of Cameron comes to feel like a mere conduit for these experiences -- she doesn't have a lot of life of her own and I had trouble feeling like I really "knew" her even after spending 400+ pages in her company, listening to her voice. It feels a little disingenuous that she never seems to really struggle with her identity as gay even though she grows up in a culture and within a family that sees it as sinful and wrong. Maybe Danforth wanted to be like, "Being queer isn't always about an identity crisis," to which I want to respond, "Well, no, but being a teen IS always about an identity crisis."

Still, this novel is well-written, visceral, and vivid, and as someone who came of age in rural America in the 90s myself, it also brought back me back to that time. Minus the acceptance of my own burgeoning queer identity. ...more

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Mar 23, 2015 Renata rated it really liked it

Shelves: ya, fiction, lgbtq

Loved this nuanced portrayal of life as a queer teen in a small, conservative town. I loved Cameron's strength in the face of huge amounts of bullshit.

I read reviews that said this feels more like an adult novel with a teen protag than a YA novel, and that could be true. Teen appeal might be limited to pretentious young lesbians? Which is a fine and noble audience. That said, as a straight adult, I definitely dug it. ...more

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