How to Survive a Summer

April 17, 2017
Will, a likeable, awkward academic plodding through life and his dissertation, was forced to attend an evangelical gay-conversion summer camp in Mississippi during his adolescence. When a fellow camper’s memoir based on the experience is turned into a kitschy, possibly homophobic horror film, Will takes an emergency leave from his unfulfilling adult life to confront his past. While it’s evident that something tragic happened at the camp, the specifics are not revealed until the end of the book. The result is writing that’s largely diffuse and slow rather than suspenseful. By contrast, the strongest passages are those set during Will’s early childhood with his preacher father, whose shock at seeing his son shimmy in the church choir creates a tension between them from which neither will recover. Captivating, too, is the fact that Will’s aunt, the mystifying Mother Maude, ran the conversion camp with her deranged, abusive husband, but that her intentions stemmed from a more personal reason than just wanting the boys to avoid an “abomination.” Though the story takes too long to get where it’s going, these threads are clear and moving, revealing White’s talent in evoking the complexities of the rural South. Agent: Noah Ballard, Curtis Brown.

April 15, 2017
An attempt to "pray away the gay" has tragic consequences.Will Dillard has a secret. It's not that he's gay; that's no secret at all, not anymore. It's that he spent one summer at Camp Levi, an institution devoted to "curing" teenage boys of their homosexuality. The program was a combination of Scripture and abuse, and Will's time there came to an abrupt and horrifying end when a camper disappeared. Having left home for college--and, later, graduate school--he's still haunted by his past, but it's a past he has no intention of sharing with anyone. Then that terrible summer at Camp Levi becomes the basis for a slasher movie, and Will learns that he'll never escape. An email from one of the former counselors involved in the making of the film sends him back to Mississippi looking for answers and a sense of closure. First-time novelist White has the makings of a great book, but his work shows some of the weaknesses common to debuts. There are episodes that are simply impossible to believe, such as the one in which Will climbs under his desk during a panic attack and neither of his fellow teaching assistants, with whom he shares a cramped office, notices. There are also problems of structure and style. It makes perfect psychological sense that Will would want to keep the details of an traumatic adolescent experience from the lovers and friends he's met since leaving home, but, as a narrative device, his reticence is frustrating. There's a lack of definition; it feels like White hasn't quite decided which story he's going to tell. The whole novel is, of course, Will's story, but it's Camp Levi that makes his story singular, and the author takes his time getting there. Much of the novel is taken up with Will's road trip and with scenes from his life just before he begins conversion therapy. The writing, for the most part, is perfunctory, so plot is the pull here, but the pace is too slow to be satisfying. A fascinating subject rendered in disappointing prose.

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May 1, 2017
Twenty-five-year-old Will is conflicted when a sensational movie is released based in part on his teenage experience of a conversion-therapy camp designed to cure him of his homosexuality. So traumatic was his monthlong experience in the camp that Will is reluctant to see the movie, which is attracting a cult audience. Will's trauma was exacerbated by the camp's location in a wooded area called the Neck, which his late mother had rendered eerily fabulous through her stories. The book proceeds by fits and starts with sometimes confusing flashbacks within flashbacks to the camp and Will's earlier life. In the present, he is on a road trip to visit his father, a former minister from whom he is estranged. Will is a sometimes unsympathetic character, self-dramatizing and plagued by cowardice, who tells his story in an often-stilted voice. The narrative takes a melodramatic turn when it dramatizes the tragic event that ended the camp experience. Despite its flaws, however, the story has enough inherent interest to hold readers' attention to its somewhat ambiguous end.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

Starred review from November 1, 2017

Will Dillard is working on his film theory dissertation when he learns about Proud Flesh, a slasher movie about a group of straight teens who try to rebuild a dilapidated gay conversion therapy camp only to be stalked and killed by a former attendee. Will is transported to his adolescence, when he was sent to Camp Levi, the inspiration for the film's setting. There, he and four other boys were subjected to a month of torture. Meanwhile, the movie is causing rifts in the LGBTQ community yet also garnering a following. White's stark but beautiful debut is about rebuilding one's past and having the strength to accept oneself. Will's journey, told through flashbacks from when he first discovered that he was gay up through his days at Camp Levi, is searing. Funny and anxious, Will is likable, and the portrayal of the LGBTQ community is free of stereotypes. VERDICT For those looking for a cathartic novel or an exploration of the obstacles that many gay teens face.-Tyler Hixson, Brooklyn Public Library

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