The Weekend

by Peter Cameron

Overview

On a midsummer weekend, in a country house in upstate New York, three friends, Lyle, Marian, and John, gather on the anniversary of the death of John's brother, who was also Lyle's lover. As Tony's absence haunts each of them in different ways, the reunion is complicated by the presence of Lyle's new lover, a much younger man named Robert, and a faux-Italian dinner guest with a penchant for truth telling. As the seemingly idyllic weekend proceeds, each character is stripped bare, and old memories and new desires create a chemistry that will transform them all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312428709
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	03/31/2009
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	526,596
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Peter Cameron is the author of several novels, including Andorra and Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You. He lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

Full of observations that ring like porch chimes and flicker like fireflies, evanescent yet indelible” —The New Yorker

“A tale of love, mourning, emotional risk-taking and off-center lives . . . It hovers in a corner of your memory for a long, long time.” —Margaria Fichtner, The Miami Herald

“A fascinating literary page-turner . . . We close the novel not only knowing each complicated 'prickly' character better, but also more aware and appreciative of the intricate sculpture that underlies all human social arrangements.” —Michael Dorris, Los Angeles Times

“Echoes Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose brilliant narrative critiques of material culture open, again and again, to the metaphysical.” —Joyce Reiser Kornblatt, The New York Times Book Review

“A novel so moving that, on finishing it, we are convinced that something of importance has taken place. We feel deeply moved, and bereft.” —Francine Prose, The Yale Review

From the Publisher

Three friends gather in the woods of upstate New York on the anniversary of a friend's death, only to be joined by two outsiders in Cameron's latest novel about relationships and love. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Poor Robert. A young painter, he's invited to the country by his new love, Lyle, a middle-aged art critic and a bit of a prig. They are off to stay with the useless John and the unappealing Marian, a rich married couple and Lyle's best friends. Their house is also where Lyle's lover Tony died, exactly one year ago, as we creepily learn. And not only was Tony Lyle's lover, he was also John's half-brother. Get off the train!, you want to yell to Robert. But by the time all the pieces are in place it's too late, and the beautifully controlled horror of the novel has begun. Tensions develop rapidly on all fronts: between the generations, between the new lovers, between the past and the present, between those with hope and those without. And just when you think that the story of this weekend is all memory and conversation, things start to happen. This brief novel confirms what readers of Far-Flung Stories (LJ 9/15/91) and Leap Year (LJ 3/1/90) have long suspected: Cameron is one of our very best writers. For all fiction collections.—Brian Kenney, Brooklyn P.L.

Library Journal