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Avoidance
Jeremy struggles to write his dissertation on the Amish and the laws of expulsion. How does someone, excluded entirely from the only community they have ever known, live the rest of their life? After extensive interviews with Beulah—a young woman banished—Jeremy is no closer to understanding her choice than he is to his own peculiar exile.Camp Ironwood, set in the Vermont woods, is more than a summer distraction for restless adolescent boys—it is a place to belong. And not unlike the Amish community, it is a place where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For Jeremy, first as a camper and later as the co-director, the usual camp activities become their own kind of ritual that binds the community. But when he is blindsided by the seductive charm of Max, a fourteen-year-old boy from Manhattan, all arms and legs and attitude, Jeremy must confront his desires, and worse yet, uncover the dark secrets of his beloved Camp Ironwood.In the powerful and daring novel Avoidance, Lowenthal elegantly draws unexpected parallels between the Amish and Camp Ironwood. By doing so, he ingeniously explores an age-old individual desires versus the good of a community.
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First published November 1, 2002
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About the author
Michael Lowenthal
30 books38 followersMichael Lowenthal is the author of the novels Charity Girl (Houghton Mifflin, 2007), Avoidance (Graywolf Press, 2002) and The Same Embrace (Dutton, 1998). His short stories have appeared in Tin House, the Southern Review, the Kenyon Review, and Esquire.com, and have been widely anthologized, in such volumes as Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge (HarperCollins), Bestial Noise: The Tin House Fiction Reader (Bloomsbury), and Best New American Voices 2005 (Harcourt). Three of his stories have received "Special Mention" in Pushcart Prize anthologies. He has also written nonfiction for the New York Times Magazine, Boston Magazine, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Out, and many other publications.
The recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Wesleyan writers' conferences, the MacDowell Colony, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, and the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, Lowenthal is also the winner of the James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Prize. He teaches creative writing in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University.
Before becoming a full-time writer, Lowenthal worked as an editor for University Press of New England, where he founded the Hardscrabble Books imprint, publishing such authors as Chris Bohjalian, W.D. Wetherell, and Ernest Hebert. He studied English and comparative religion at Dartmouth College, from which he graduated in 1990 as class valedictorian.
Lowenthal lives in Boston, where he is an active former board member of the literary human rights organization PEN New England.
The recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Wesleyan writers' conferences, the MacDowell Colony, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, and the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, Lowenthal is also the winner of the James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Prize. He teaches creative writing in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University.
Before becoming a full-time writer, Lowenthal worked as an editor for University Press of New England, where he founded the Hardscrabble Books imprint, publishing such authors as Chris Bohjalian, W.D. Wetherell, and Ernest Hebert. He studied English and comparative religion at Dartmouth College, from which he graduated in 1990 as class valedictorian.
Lowenthal lives in Boston, where he is an active former board member of the literary human rights organization PEN New England.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
December 7, 2021
This book... It's great, don't get me wrong. It's disturbing, very sad, and... you'll know if you need to read it or not. Feel free to open it up and put it right back down and pretend you never bought it. Keep reading if you need to read it.
April 7, 2015
I have some complicated feelings about this book. On the one hand, I found it clumsily structured. I don't think Lowenthal adequately develops the Amish plotline, which isn't strong enough to act as the parallel to the Ironwood camp main plot he wants it to. I also found the time jumps poorly done. I think Lowenthal's reach exceeded his grasp here, because this seems like a very ambitious book that needed to be longer than approx. 250 pages to fully explore all the things this book wanted to explore.
On the other hand, I think this book handled some incredibly difficult material very well. There were a lot of scenes in this book that both challenged and moved me. I found it very perceptive in important ways. Without getting too heavily into spoilers I was shocked by the sympathetic treatment Lowenthal gave certain characters/behaviors. This is the kind of book that forces you into having a continuous internal moral debate with yourself, and I appreciate a book that can be as genuinely thought provoking at this one was, even if I had some problems with the execution.
On the other hand, I think this book handled some incredibly difficult material very well. There were a lot of scenes in this book that both challenged and moved me. I found it very perceptive in important ways. Without getting too heavily into spoilers I was shocked by the sympathetic treatment Lowenthal gave certain characters/behaviors. This is the kind of book that forces you into having a continuous internal moral debate with yourself, and I appreciate a book that can be as genuinely thought provoking at this one was, even if I had some problems with the execution.
June 13, 2007
I didn't expect to connect so intimately with a book about Middle-class boys and men at summer camp. I suppose this is a testament to the incredible writing prowess of Michael Lowenthal. I was captivated. I was there.
May 28, 2008
Spectacularly rendered problematization of desire vs. responsibility. Incredibly personal; touching without being cliché. Those familiar with the scenery of New Hampshire and Vermont will find the novel's descriptions striking a chord.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 8, 2012
I love this book with my whole heart. Just rediscovered it on my bookshelf after unpacking from a move, and I'm halfway through it again. I love Michael Lowenthal's writing and I find it absolutely beautiful. It's a favorite that I'll read over and over.
November 13, 2023
Well, I knew I was in for an uncomfortable read when I saw the back-cover blurb by Jim Grimsley and the dedication to (among others) Scott Heim. I suppose Lowenthal could've gone for the trifecta and roped in Dennis Cooper, but what the heck.
How strange: No sooner than I finish a book incorrectly accused of lacking an "essential element" (thus the NY Times critic wrt Stegner's *Angle of Repose*) than I read a book that for me lacks an essential element, namely, this one. But it could just be me, because I don't quite understand the kind of psychological makeup one must have in order to fall head-over-heels for, and be made an utter fool of by, a 14-year-old boy. Except back when I was about 14, of course. Certainly author Lowenthal tries hard enough to make this plausible: first-person narrator Jeremy lost his beloved dad when he was 8, and apparently feels the need to compensate by being something of a father or big-brother figure to kids, especially vulnerable ones; combine this with a homosexual identity he'd been repressing and/or ignoring all his life, and maybe the borderline between paternal or big-brotherly love and erotic obsession becomes fuzzy. So maybe Lowenthal succeeds, but I don't quite have the ability to understand, let alone empathize. This isn't an expression of regret, by the way.
One thing I *do* know from experience is that when a 14-year-old boy flirts with a man twice his age, sex is almost always the last thing on the kid's mind. Even as recently as a generation ago, a barely adolescent gay boy would be too terrified to flirt seriously with just about anyone, after all, let alone anyone resembling an authority figure. Flirting with an authority figure would then be a way of embarrassing or shaming the authority figure and might even approach being an expression of contempt, especially if the kid doesn't think the authority figure's heterosexual creds are entirely in order. When discussing such a case with a colleague, she gave me the perfect word to describe the phenomenon: Geltungsdrang. Sometimes the clumsy, convoluted German language manages in one (admittedly compound) word to express what takes several in English: in this case, a compulsion to seek validation. Depending on the kid, the degree to which this is cunningly manipulative will vary: in the case of this novel's Max, the degree is pretty obviously high, which one would think would be an immediate turn-off to any sensible adult, and I finished the book without a clue as to how or why both camp directors found Max -- as opposed to all the other boys at camp -- particularly appealing. Granted, the demands of the flesh can override sensibility, but I just don't get the attraction to a particularly obstreperous kid, even if there's vulnerability behind the bravado. Heck, Jeremy never even gives the impression that Max is all that good-looking -- but then, perhaps Max is, and Jeremy is too uptight to say so.
This much said, I'm strongly inclined to give Lowenthal the benefit of the doubt because the other characters, to my mind at least, ring true: the confident, cleverly manipulative camp director Charlie; the godlike camp founder Ruff (what a name, eh?), whose ability to suppress any memory of his own misdeeds rivals that of, well, all too many camp directors, clergy, and so forth; and Max too, especially his reaction to Charlie's behavior and Jeremy's "coming out." Jeremy's confused sense of loyalty and devotion, too, is compellingly drawn out: he makes several mistakes and thus is not quite hero, not quite villain. I would have liked to see more of Caroline, who has a heart beneath the tough-as-nails exterior -- but then, she knows how to draw boundaries and is thus regrettably of interest only as a foil to Jeremy and his boundary problems.
Counterpointed with all this is Jeremy's research into and almost-friendships with Amish both inside and outside the Amish community. There are no exact parallels, as one can imagine, although Jeremy's interest in those Amish banished from their communities does find some echo in his own secret outsider status, as well as the fate that would no doubt await him should he act on his impulses. The Amish on both sides of the divide are depicted with no small degree of sympathy and insight; in fact, I found myself preferring the raw material of Jeremy's dissertation to the camp intrigue. Strangely missing is any sense of religious convictions on Jeremy's part -- he's supposed to be a graduate divinity student after all. Or maybe it’s precisely divinity students who lack religious convictions?
Side note: yet another coincidental similarity to Stegner's *Angle of Repose*: both novels feature a thankfully failed love/sex scene set to a background of Fourth of July fireworks. Dear authors of the world: Please let's not make a habit of employing this trope, even ironically!
An imperfect novel for sure, but one that handles a difficult issue without recourse to easy goods-vs.-evil binaries. Four stars.
How strange: No sooner than I finish a book incorrectly accused of lacking an "essential element" (thus the NY Times critic wrt Stegner's *Angle of Repose*) than I read a book that for me lacks an essential element, namely, this one. But it could just be me, because I don't quite understand the kind of psychological makeup one must have in order to fall head-over-heels for, and be made an utter fool of by, a 14-year-old boy. Except back when I was about 14, of course. Certainly author Lowenthal tries hard enough to make this plausible: first-person narrator Jeremy lost his beloved dad when he was 8, and apparently feels the need to compensate by being something of a father or big-brother figure to kids, especially vulnerable ones; combine this with a homosexual identity he'd been repressing and/or ignoring all his life, and maybe the borderline between paternal or big-brotherly love and erotic obsession becomes fuzzy. So maybe Lowenthal succeeds, but I don't quite have the ability to understand, let alone empathize. This isn't an expression of regret, by the way.
One thing I *do* know from experience is that when a 14-year-old boy flirts with a man twice his age, sex is almost always the last thing on the kid's mind. Even as recently as a generation ago, a barely adolescent gay boy would be too terrified to flirt seriously with just about anyone, after all, let alone anyone resembling an authority figure. Flirting with an authority figure would then be a way of embarrassing or shaming the authority figure and might even approach being an expression of contempt, especially if the kid doesn't think the authority figure's heterosexual creds are entirely in order. When discussing such a case with a colleague, she gave me the perfect word to describe the phenomenon: Geltungsdrang. Sometimes the clumsy, convoluted German language manages in one (admittedly compound) word to express what takes several in English: in this case, a compulsion to seek validation. Depending on the kid, the degree to which this is cunningly manipulative will vary: in the case of this novel's Max, the degree is pretty obviously high, which one would think would be an immediate turn-off to any sensible adult, and I finished the book without a clue as to how or why both camp directors found Max -- as opposed to all the other boys at camp -- particularly appealing. Granted, the demands of the flesh can override sensibility, but I just don't get the attraction to a particularly obstreperous kid, even if there's vulnerability behind the bravado. Heck, Jeremy never even gives the impression that Max is all that good-looking -- but then, perhaps Max is, and Jeremy is too uptight to say so.
This much said, I'm strongly inclined to give Lowenthal the benefit of the doubt because the other characters, to my mind at least, ring true: the confident, cleverly manipulative camp director Charlie; the godlike camp founder Ruff (what a name, eh?), whose ability to suppress any memory of his own misdeeds rivals that of, well, all too many camp directors, clergy, and so forth; and Max too, especially his reaction to Charlie's behavior and Jeremy's "coming out." Jeremy's confused sense of loyalty and devotion, too, is compellingly drawn out: he makes several mistakes and thus is not quite hero, not quite villain. I would have liked to see more of Caroline, who has a heart beneath the tough-as-nails exterior -- but then, she knows how to draw boundaries and is thus regrettably of interest only as a foil to Jeremy and his boundary problems.
Counterpointed with all this is Jeremy's research into and almost-friendships with Amish both inside and outside the Amish community. There are no exact parallels, as one can imagine, although Jeremy's interest in those Amish banished from their communities does find some echo in his own secret outsider status, as well as the fate that would no doubt await him should he act on his impulses. The Amish on both sides of the divide are depicted with no small degree of sympathy and insight; in fact, I found myself preferring the raw material of Jeremy's dissertation to the camp intrigue. Strangely missing is any sense of religious convictions on Jeremy's part -- he's supposed to be a graduate divinity student after all. Or maybe it’s precisely divinity students who lack religious convictions?
Side note: yet another coincidental similarity to Stegner's *Angle of Repose*: both novels feature a thankfully failed love/sex scene set to a background of Fourth of July fireworks. Dear authors of the world: Please let's not make a habit of employing this trope, even ironically!
An imperfect novel for sure, but one that handles a difficult issue without recourse to easy goods-vs.-evil binaries. Four stars.
June 28, 2022
Michael Lowenthal has taken a heartbreaking subject matter and explored—and unpacked it—in a whole new way. And it is a subject that has always fascinated me: are abusers byproducts of their past trauma? Or can untraumatized people start a whole new cycle of abuse? Lowenthal explores those questions with tenderness and honesty, not judging his characters but presenting them as real people with shades of good and evil. And it is in that honesty where the power of this book lies because, if we want to understand people like this, we have to start seeing the layers of their humanity and culpability. There are passages in this book that I won’t soon forget.
July 25, 2024
"save yourself to save others" i'll take a note from the book and save myself from this mess. i understand that this is 'about' the differences in personal needs vs communal needs but how does that make sense juxtaposing people leaving their amish family and a creep trying to keep himself from taking advantage of a teen? those aren't really comparable
January 12, 2019
Holy cow, what an amazing read. I was hesitant at first because when I read the book jacket blurb I saw there would be homosexual situations. . . but this was a real eye-opener for me. It's crazy how some tendencies, when acted upon, can destroy people.
June 5, 2017
The writing is seriously disjointed. I just.. no.
August 7, 2009
An affecting book. A Harvard Divinity School student writing his dissertation on the Amish practice of shunning recalls his years as a summer camper after his father died and, especially, later, as an assistant director at the same camp during a year when he has a special relationship with one of the campers. It's a meditation on the meaning of especially intense communities set apart from the world, on friendship, & on the costs of inappropriate expressions of love. It's written in a way that makes you eager to keep reading to see what will happen next, only with an excess of writerly similes.
December 7, 2009
I want to like this book--it's about gay desire and outcasts and all those nice things. But the writing gets in the way at every turn. So many tortured analogies, heavy-handed foreshadowing, general overwriting...it just really isn't my favorite writing style. The main character is flimsily rendered, and I find myself continually doubting the character as presented. Is he shy or not? What's the deal with his family? Perhaps the story will get more engaging and allow me to look past the stylistic shortcomings. If this weren't a gay-themed book, I would not be spending another second on this one. But it is, so I am.
August 26, 2025
Psychology, philosophy, religion and sexuality all tied up in this interesting piece of fiction about isolation. The isolation of lost parents. The isolation of being shunned like the Amish do to some of their folk. The isolation of being a young gay man who is the asst. director of a large, summer-long camp for boys - caring for the boys but afraid of crossing the line. The isolation of not facing up to things.
Kind of fascinating.
Kind of fascinating.
January 8, 2023
I remember liking this fine novel when I read it back in 2013 but, unfortunately it has left a very faint imprint on my memory so, until I have a chance to read it again, I must give it a cautious three stars.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews