See larger image
See Hi-Res Jpeg image

Avoidance

A Novel

Graywolf Press Hardcover, November 2002
ISBN: 978-1-55597-367-4, ISBN10: 1-55597-367-1,
6 x 9 inches, 272 pages,
Trade Paperback, $16.00

Praise
Biography

Share this book with friends through your favorite social networking site.

Shelve:

add this book's widget
to your site or blog

Categories and Subcategories

See All Categories Gender Studies GLBT Studies Literature U.S. & Canada: Novels

A Book Sense 76 Selection

As this widely praised novel begins, Harvard graduate student Jeremy struggles to write his dissertation on the Amish and their laws of expulsion. How does someone, excluded entirely from the only community they've ever known, live the rest of their life? After extensive interviews with Beulah—a young Amish woman thus banished—Jeremy is no closer to understanding her peculiar exile than he is to comprehending his own.

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 this powerful and daring novel, Lowenthal elegantly draws unexpected parallels between the Amish and Camp Ironwood. By doing so, he ingeniously explores an age-old dilemma: individual desires versus the good of a community.

Praise

"Fearless and expertly crafted."—Vanity Fair

"Avoidance walks a precarious tightrope between desire and responsibility, love and passion. Lowenthal's vividly imagined characters are infinitely capable of surprising us, as is his deft plot. This is a novel which asks us to both think and feel and rewards us for both."—Margot Livesey

"Lowenthal explores the slippery shapes of desire and traces the thin line between thought and deed. A splendid novel, as gripping as it is moving and complex."—Elizabeth Graver

"Avoidance is at turns utterly compelling and utterly repellent, clearly by design. A frightening, but ultimately rewarding, ride."—Jim Grimsley

"By interweaving and comparing those three types of social avoidance, as well as studying what it means to protect kinship and fellowship, Lowenthal (The Same Embrace) shows what it means to be a fallible human. At times haunting and disturbing, his second novel teaches a quiet lesson: one person can, in fact, rein in individual desires and create a community that is stronger than the sum of its parts and thereby find personal redemption. With beautiful characterizations of the boys at Ironwood and a lyrical rendering of a man's conflicting spiritual pulls, Avoidance is not to be missed. Highly recommended."—Library Journal (starred review)

"Finely etched . . . Lowenthal deftly weaves together scenes of Amish and camp life; juxtaposing these two tightly knit communities, he explores the appeal of highly structured, restrictive collectives as well as questions of temptation and self-mastery, faith and belonging. Lowenthal has a fine ear for the vernaculars of urban campers, Harvard academics and the cloistered, bilingual Amish, and he handles the potentially explosive subject of Jeremy's unrequited attraction to Max with subtlety and sensitivity. These different elements form a rich, complex narrative that is as inspiring as it is thought provoking."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Beautiful and gripping."—Out

"[Lowenthal] crafts a tale at times so disturbing you want to shield your eyes. But his storytelling makes it impossible to look away."—Jane H. Ungaschick, Boston Magazine

"Seductive and smart."—Shout Magazine

"A striking meditation on community that centers on a graduate student whose sense of belonging is threatened by his desire for a seductive teenage boy."—The Advocate

"Lowenthal deserves a medal for courage . . . [Avoidance] gleams with sensitivity and insight . . . His metaphor-rich prose grounds the fiction in a vivid landscape of particulars. Themes never override the centrality of this writer's sure-handed storytelling. It's easy to understand the victim of sexual abuse. Lowenthal achieves the much more difficult task of making fully human the potential abuser."—Newsday

About the Author(s)

Michael Lowenthal

Michael Lowenthal is the author of a previous novel, The Same Embrace, and is editor of many nonfiction collections. He currently teaches writing at Boston College.