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Fiction General

The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore

A Novel

by (author) Kim Fu

Publisher
HarperCollins
Initial publish date
Feb 2019
Category
General, Literary
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781443453615
    Publish Date
    Feb 2018
    List Price
    $11.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781443453592
    Publish Date
    Feb 2018
    List Price
    $22.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781443453608
    Publish Date
    Feb 2019
    List Price
    $18.99

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Description

“An ambitious and dynamic portrayal of the harm humans—even young girls—can do.” Kirkus Reviews

A gripping, evocative novel about a group of young girls at a remote camp—and the night that will shape their lives for decades to come

A group of young girls descends on Camp Forevermore, a sleepaway camp in the Pacific Northwest, where their days are filled with swimming lessons, friendship bracelets and camp songs by the fire. Bursting with excitement and nervous energy, they set off on an overnight kayaking trip to a nearby island. But before the night is over, they find themselves stranded, with no adults to help them survive or guide them home.

The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore follows these five girls—Nita, Kayla, Isabel, Dina and Siobhan—through and beyond this fateful trip. We see the survivors through the successes and failures, loves and heartbreaks of their teen and adult years, and we come to understand how a tragedy can alter the lives it touches in innumerable ways. In diamond-sharp prose, Kim Fu gives us a portrait of friendship and of the families we build for ourselves—and the pasts we can’t escape.

About the author

KIM FU is a graduate of The University of British Columbia’s MFA program in creative writing. She has written poetry, essays and long-form journalism for NPR, the National Post, Ms. Magazine, Maisonneuve, The Tyee, The Rumpus, Vancouver Magazine, Grain Magazine, Room and The New Quarterly, among others. Her work has been anthologized in Best Canadian Essays and nominated for three National Magazine Awards. For Today I Am A Boy, her debut novel, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Kim is the news columns editor for This, a magazine of progressive politics now in its 47th year.

Kim Fu's profile page

Editorial Reviews

“[Fu] is a propulsive storyteller, using clear and cutting prose to move seamlessly through time… In the one-way glass of the novel, we watch the girls of Forevermore from a series of angles, in all their private anguishes. We lean closer, unable to turn away.” — New York Times Book Review

“Fu precisely renders the banal humiliations of childhood, the chilling steps humans take to survive, and the way time warps memory.” — Publishers Weekly

“A sensitive, evocative exploration of how the past threads itself through our lives, reemerging in unexpected ways. Kim Fu skillfully measures how long and loudly one formative moment can reverberate.” — Celeste Ng, bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere

“Fu offers an unblinking view of the social and emotional survival of the fittest that all too often marks the female coming of age.” — Toronto Star

“These portraits of sisterhood, motherhood, daughterhood, wifehood, girlfriendhood, independent womanhood, and other female-identified-hoods sing and groan and scream with complexity and nuance, and they make me want to read her next ten books.” — The Stranger

“To say this is a story of survival is too simple . . . . Fu avoids the obvious and tidy, allowing us to imagine what happens next.” — Winnipeg Free Press

Forevermore is the first truly great novel I’ve read in 2018... As intricately fashioned and as bold-hearted as books by novelists who’ve been publishing for decades.” — Seattle Review of Books

“I loved it for its portrayal of each of the girls. . .and for showing that a single incident can colour your entire life.” — Canadian Living

“A thoroughly entertaining, complex novel full of intricate insights into human nature.” — Quill & Quire

“An ambitious and dynamic portrayal of the harm humans—even young girls—can do.” — Kirkus Reviews

“The construction of Lost Girls makes it a standout, Fu taking readers to the edge of the plot precipice, building tension as the campers are forced to make decisions children shouldn’t have to make.” — The Missourian

“Stunning. Kim Fu explores the lifelong ripple effects of tragedy, writing with wit, heart and precision. A cast of characters both flawed and fascinating. I was utterly transfixed by this book.” — Katrina Onstad, bestselling author of Everybody has Everything

“I devoured The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore. This is a novel that contains everything anyone could ever want: heartbreak, sly humour, bear cubs, and Fu’s wise and steady hand to make sense of it all.” — Jen Sookfong Lee, author of The Conjoined

“The characters in Kim Fu’s dark, deftly woven fable align and disperse like planets, bound in their separate orbits to a shared, definitive moment in time. Fu traces those orbits with a master astronomer’s care and observation, mapping in clear and rich prose a hidden universe of girlhood and becoming” — Michelle Orange, author of This Is Running for Your Life

“A vivid and haunting story of lives interrupted by tragedy. The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore maps the journey from girlhood to womanhood, radiating both nostalgia and hope.” — Hala Alyan, author of Salt Houses

Praise for For Today I Am a Boy

Winner of the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Winner of the Canadian Authors Association Emerging Writer Award
New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction Finalist
Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction Finalist
Canada Reads Longlist
Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize Longlist

“Sensitively wrought . . . . Abounds in recognizable archetypes of the model minority . . . but the story itself contemplates something larger: how to define and defend one’s identity against the clamoring voices of expectation, from both family and society.” — New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice

“Expertly written and hauntingly candid. [The characters] are carefully rendered, compelling and explored through odd and sometimes unnerving details that only an artful writer can achieve.” — Winnipeg Free Press

“Moves quickly and gracefully from moment to moment. A quiet novel, but it’s one about quiet pains.” — Grantland

“Fu does an excellent job of conveying the desperation of one trapped in the wrong body as well as the confusion and frustration of that condition. . . . An interesting, thought-provoking novel.” — Booklist

“[A] quietly forceful debut…[with] a redemptive trajectory that feels fully earned…. Shot through with melancholy while capturing the bliss of discovering one’s sexual self.” — Kirkus Reviews

“In this impressive debut, Fu sensitively and poetically portrays Peter’s predicament so that readers feel his discomfort with his own body as well as his painful sense of yearning and the plight of his three sisters, who scatter in all directions to escape their unhappy home.” — Library Journal

“Fu’s sharp eye and the book’s specificity of place provide freshness…. Although the focus is always Peter, Fu is adept at depicting the shifting alliances between him and his sisters, and at revealing how being an outsider shapes Peter’s expectations and options.” — Publishers Weekly

For Today I Am A Boy is a tutorial in the many shades of longing… I’d wager a lot more people will know [Fu’s] name before long.” — National Post

“It has become cliché to hail an exciting ‘new voice’ in fiction, and many are drowned out by their own hype. [...] Kim Fu should be an exception.” — The Globe and Mail

“A debut distinguished by subtlety and quiet, and one which makes you sit very still as it follows its protagonist towards a precarious happiness. You’ll be intrigued and moved.” — The New Zealand Herald

“A true act of mastery… [Fu’s] most remarkable achievement is in creating a quietly unforgettable character, one who is not meant to represent an ‘average’ or ‘typical’ trans life, but an individual one.” — Bustle

“Fresh, poetic and superhaunting. Five stars from us.” — Elle Australia

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