Find Him

by Peter Cameron, Michael Round (Editor), Sandra Worrell (Illustrator)

Find Him is an account of a teenager’s developing self-concept, focusing on the social, physical, emotional and sexual dimensions of ‘self’ with a painstaking exploration of his sexual identity. The family bonds also play an immense role in developing the plot and bringing the characters to life. Find Him does have an almost autobiographical feel to it that is page turning.

The storyline is set in a London working class community now and especially in the 1960s. This novel, full of humour and sadness, records the courage of the family members as they take the law into their own hands by ignoring the rules. This follows a tragic loss in the family and the rape by a gang of youths of one of the young members of the family.

The homoerotic nature of the boy’s orientation is nicely understated and cleverly placed in juxtaposition with the day-to-day family events and domestic moments, catching the atmosphere of the 1960s.

The cover design by Sandra Worrell is dramatic and catches the mood of the 60s and her three illustrations are exactly right in reflecting the text.

Published and designed by Rainbow Valley Books (www.rainbowvalleybooks.com) the novel is based on the writing of Peter Cameron as primary author with additional writing by Michael Round. Peter Cameron and Rainbow Valley Books plan that this should be the first volume of a trilogy with the next book to be published in the spring of 2015

204 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 30, 2014

About the author

Peter Cameron (b. 1959) is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. Born in Pompton Plains, New Jersey, he moved to New York City after graduating college in 1982. Cameron began publishing stories in the New Yorker one year later. His numerous award-winning stories for that magazine led to the publication of his first book, One Way or Another (1986), which received a special citation for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for a First Book of Fiction. He has since focused on writing novels, including Leap Year (1990) and The City of Your Final Destination (2002), which was a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist. Cameron lives in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann]

On a point of information I thought it worth letting potential readers know that this is not a novel by the American writer Peter Cameron author of many novels like 'The Weekend', 'Final Destination' and 'Andorra' but a novel by an Englsih author of the same name and it is a first novel which, I am thinking of buying and reading.

My intention is not to disparage or discourage anyone from reading the Englsih Peter Cameron only to help those seeking out tonly he works of the American Peter Cameron.

[Nicolas Chinardet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the fact that the main character bears the same name as the author, which could lead the reader to believe this is autobiographical, the plot also has a dreamlike quality that takes the book away from reality and into the realm of fantasy.

Despite not being a great piece of writing (structure, style, etc), the book has a naive charm that keeps the reader engaged.