Praise for What Happens At Night "A snow-swept journey to the ends of the Earth continues Cameron''s exploration of defamiliarized landscapes and the intricacies of human relationships . A dreamy fable confronting love, death, and our inevitable inadequacy yet persistence in the face of both." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "The prose in What Happens at Night is faultlessly elegant and quietly menacing, like a tuxedo lined with knives. I can''t think of another book at once so beautiful and so unnerving, so poised between miracle and disaster. Peter Cameron is one of America''s greatest writers, the living stylist I most revere." --Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You and Cleanness "This book is a masterpiece--reading it reminds me of the first time I read Kafka. A whole new vision is suddenly revealed: unique, unexpected, unforgettable. Get ready for a new adjective: Cameronesque .
" --Edmund White, author of A Boy''s Own Story "In his characteristically precise and lucid prose, Peter Cameron invents a virtuosic tale that is by turns terrifying, comic, and heartbreaking. We do not always know whether we are in the realm of the real or the hallucinatory in this thrillingly mysterious and gorgeously written novel. What is never in doubt is that we are in the hands of a ravishing stylist and a supremely gifted storyteller." --Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend "In the beautiful What Happens at Night , Peter Cameron sends a married couple to a mysterious northern country where only the schnapps is reliable. The world he creates is both recognizable and enchantingly strange. I never knew what was going to happen next, and I couldn''t stop turning the pages. A profound pleasure for readers." --Margot Livesey, author of Mercury and The Flight of Gemma Hardy "Peter Cameron''s What Happens at Night is a surreal, funny, heartbreaking story about love and mortality.
Cameron''s sense of balance between the comic and the catastrophic, between cynicism and sincerity, is astonishing. This book reminds me of nothing else I''ve ever read, which is high praise indeed." --Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours and The Snow Queen "Peter Cameron has long been among my favorite contemporary writers. He''s a compassionate and unsparing surveyor of all that comprises human character. What Happens at Night finds its home among the mid-twentieth-century classics of psychological realism, as brutal, in its way, as The Sheltering Sky , and just as memorable, just as peopled with the deep human mysteries. This new novel is a powerful and admirable addition to Cameron''s estimable body of work." --Rick Moody, author of the The Ice Storm and The Long Accomplishment "I don''t think I''ve ever read a book by an American or by a living person that''s as exquisitely rendered as What Happens at Night . Every word is exactly as it should be; there is not a single extra word out of place.
The novel feels as though it traveled through time to arrive here. Cameron''s prose creates an effect that is literally like a fugue (or cinematic fog): intense, beautiful, inescapable, and so much about grief that has been and grief that is to come, heartbreaking and tender. The story is so intense, such a fine reduction of the enormity of the dreams of marriage, the responsibilities of marriage, of life, of love, and the ways in which--unintentionally or not--we inevitably fail each other and ourselves." --A. M. Homes, author of Days of Awe and May We Be Forgiven Praise for Coral Glynn "A sad, beautiful, absorbing story of love missed, love lost, love found . Cameron has taken great pains to artfully reveal the wounding shards of personal history that motivate--or enervate--every character. They lie inside each person, so the reader has the sense of their hidden presence even before the lacerating shock when they''re let loose.
Quite apart from the narrative drive, there is plenty of propulsion in the powerful elegance of the writing of this story of a young nurse named Coral Glynn." Dominique Browning, The New York Times Book Review "Peter Cameron spent part of his childhood in England, so his accent, so to speak, is authentic; but it''s also derived from his veneration for British miniaturists like the novelists Elizabeth Taylor and Barbara Pym. Pull up a chair by the fire and settle in, but don''t get too lulled by the domestic setting, because Cameron''s writing is full of sharp angles and unanticipated swerves into the droll and the downright weird . Coral Glynn is young, alone in the world, and described by other characters as ''rather pretty . in a plain way.'' If that phrase puts you in mind of Jane Eyre , it should; Cameron also doffs his cap to Daphne DuMaurier''s classic about a solitary orphan, Rebecca . I mean it as the highest compliment when I say that Coral Glynn is not ''about'' anything so much as it is about the pleasures of storytelling. Even throwaway scenes are so closely observed, they offer the delight of the unexpected word or detail.
[Cameron] artfully compresses so many beloved English stories and tropes into one smashing novel." Maureen Corrigan, NPR "Some novels hit you twice: while you''re caught in their spell, and then again, after you''ve finished and are left wondering, What was that all about? At first blush, Peter Cameron''s Coral Glynn is a curio--an atmospheric period piece. In its simplicity, it seems a throwback to mid-20th-century domestic novels, but with echoes of Jane Eyre --a sort of Gothic lite. However, its concerns with repressed homosexuality, lies of omission and whether it''s preferable to settle for ''a quiet, decent life'' or hold out for greater fulfillment are timeless . Cameron revisits the themes of alienation and duplicity explored in his contemporary novels set in America, which include Andorra, The Weekend and Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You . His writing is as quiet and unassuming as his heroine, with occasional flashes of surprising beauty. Holly leaves shiver ''metallically . the sound of the world asking once again to be assuaged.
'' The various strands of Coral Glynn come together as neatly as a schoolgirl''s early morning braid. But some loose ends inevitably work their way free--and that''s where, in the end, Cameron obliquely directs our focus . What do our reactions to this story--and specifically, our propensity to seek a happily-ever-after, all''s-well-that-ends-well ending--indicate about us? Cameron writes, ''How was it ever possible to know who, or what, people really were? They were all like coins, with two sides, or die, with six.'' In retrospect, Cameron''s mesmerizing, melancholy novel is not as pat as it seems. And that''s where it really gets interesting." Heller McAlpin, NPR "Peter Cameron [is] an elegantly acute and mysteriously beguiling writer . The plots, the ventures, the encounters of his characters, instead of taking them from point A to point B, abduct them into unintended and more expansive itineraries." Richard Eder, The Boston Globe "A big, dark house in the English countryside, with its brooding, damaged master; the pretty but gawky young woman who comes to work there--and to stumble over secrets in gloomy hallways: These are the elements of an old-fashioned gothic tale, and also of Peter Cameron''s lovely, enigmatic new novel, Coral Glynn .
There''s a way stories like this are supposed to go, and Coral Glynn both does and doesn''t play by the old rules . Coral Glynn is a tribute to a certain breed of novel most often written by British women in the mid-20th century: astringently unsentimental, disciplined, replete with half-acknowledged emotions moving like the shadows of alarmingly large fish deep beneath the surface of the sea. Because their own time preferred to valorize a more chest-thumping sort of writer, their brilliance has been almost forgotten. Some, like Muriel Spark, never entirely slipped from view. Others, like Elizabeth Taylor, are just now being revived. There''s a dash of Daphne du Maurier here, too, and a touch of the sublime Barbara Pym . Like Cameron''s novels, these books have won a following that makes up in tenacity for what it lacks in size. The audience for both keeps on growing, one devoted reader at a time.
" Laura Miller, Salon "In his moody and haunting Coral Glynn , Peter Cameron serves up all the elements of gothic fiction . The novelist adds enough twists and tensions to make the book feel refreshingly new . With its echoes of Iris Murdoch''s moral fables and Daphne du Maurier''s lush romances, Coral Glynn is like an engrossing black-and-white movie for a rainy afternoon--a tale of clouded hearts, hidden motives and dangerous affections." Mark Doty, More Magazine "Like its packaging, Peter Cameron''s Coral Glynn is spare and unassuming. Mr. Cameron announces his talent in the way that matters: by telling a riveting tale with an often heartbreakingly pure prose style . Though American, Mr. Cameron is presenting an updated version of the classic English novel of manners, with its themes of balked love and painfully polite misunderstandings.
Every timorous gesture points to some profound psychological fear . Scenes unfold with the exquisite design of a one-act play, with props skillfully deployed to comic and poignant effect . [Cameron''s] writing . is bracingly unvarnished and unsentimental, stripped of pity or condescension. It is as though he has set an X-ray machine before the traditional E.