Camp Pleasant
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
This tale of summer camp horror and mystery by the author of I Am Legend is "a deeply engaging story with a clear writing style that is a pleasure to read" (Publishers Weekly).
Camp Pleasant is a place of natural beauty and campfire singalongs. But when Matt Harper arrives there to work as a counselor, he discovers it is also a place of unrelenting abuse and brutality. The new camp director "Big Ed" Nolan is such a bully that the bucolic paradise feels more like a miniature Third Reich . . . until someone finally has enough and kills Big Ed.
The suspects include a troubled young camper, a counselor who quit in the face of homophobic humiliation, and Big Ed's own wife, Ellen. "[This] minimalist plot would be inadequate in other hands, but Matheson—author of Somewhere in Time and Hell House as well as classic Twilight Zone teleplays—has such a command of his craft that this book is a pure pleasure . . .The simple style recalls Hemingway" (Publishers Weekly).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Matt Harper, a first-time counselor at a boy's summer camp, is witness to casual brutality that leads to murder in this short novel told with almost fable-like simplicity. Certainly the bullying, gluttonous headman Ed Nolan (who "has reduced Camp Pleasant to a microcosm of the Third Reich") is portrayed as a stereotype the reader is not sorry to see killed. All the sympathy is reserved for the possible suspects, from Merv Loomis, the homosexual counselor Nolan humiliates into quitting, to the troubled 10-year-old, Tony Rocca, to Nolan's meek wife, Ellen, and others. The setting and tone have the distinct feel of the early 1950s, but a casual reference to Catherine Deneuve places the action in the mid-60s or later. The minimalist plot would be inadequate in other hands, but Matheson author of Somewhere in Time and Hell House, as well as classic Twilight Zone teleplays has such command of his craft that this book is a pure pleasure. The simple style recalls Hemingway, with such lines as "It was a Wednesday night and there were movies down in the lodge so I sent my boys there and stayed in the cabin, packing my trunk." Occasionally Matheson waxes poetic: "I lay there staring at the wall, feeling my heart thud slowly in my chest like the fist of a dying man on the wall of his prison." This limited edition is sure to satisfy the veteran author's many fans and collectors.
