Strange young men in strange lands: the world of Peter Cameron

by | Jul 8, 2021 | What I'm Reading | 0 comments

Having read only two of Peter Cameron’s novelsAndorra and The City of Your Final Destination—I found them both strangely addictive. (His latest novel, What Happens at Night (2020), is waiting on my shelf.) Both of the two I’ve read involve a youngish man going to an unfamiliar spot: in the case of Andorra, it’s a fictional tiny Mediterranean country along the lines of Monaco, but in a somewhat different location. In the case of The City of Your Final Destination it’s Uruguay, though the action all takes place in a remote family compound of ex-pats far from any real Uruguayan community. in both novels, the ‘action’ of the story consists of the young men (both Americans) attempting to understand the motivations of the people he meets in these mysteriously alluring places, but while The City of Your Final Destination has an unexpectedly happy—even life-affirming—ending, the revelations of Andorra are rather chilling. Cameron’s prose carries readers along by pulling us into the insecurities, curiosities, and moments of pleasure of each young manThe skyline of a mysterious city shrouded in fog.