Andorra, the tiny storybook nation snug in the Pyrenees between France and Spain is the setting for Peter Cameron's third book, a lyrical tale that begins as a charming story of manners and romantic relations in the tiny township of La Plata, but develops into a darker (though still comic) story of deception and psychological intrigue. The author's earlier invocations of Proust and Austen give way to impulses akin to Kafka or Camus. When should you stop trusting your narrator's memories and figure out what is really going on in this place? All is not what it seems, as the dark past of several characters returns to dim the brightness of the present surroundings. The hyper-reality of the charming mountain town Cameron creates is the ideal setting for this engaging tale, told in perfect measure, tightly stitched, with no extra bits hanging loosely.


From Publishers Weekly
Concealing a dark fable about the transcendent power of the imagination within a slyly ironic tale about a man of refinement and vague intention traveling to a tiny European nation, Cameron's third novel (after The Weekend) displays his gift for language and narrative hijinks in fullest flower. The narrator, Alexander Fox, "compelled by circumstances to begin my life again in some new place," arrives by train in La Plata, the sun-splashed, oddly desolate, Monte Carlo-like capital of Andorra. He quickly becomes the cynosure of two contrasting La Plata families: that of neurotic Australian Ricky Dent, always accompanied by her large dog, Dino, who falls in love with Fox?as does her husband, a troubled bisexual composer also named Ricky Dent; and that of kayaking La Plata doyenne Sophonsobia Quay, whose uncle Roderick leases his home to Fox, and who seeks to marry Fox off to her waifish daughter, Jean. We gradually learn that Fox, a former bookseller and architect, is fleeing a tragedy involving the death of his American wife and daughter. When he is implicated in a series of murders in Andorra and his passport is confiscated by the police, he is forced to flee the country. Fox, whose evasive speech and manners begin to follow a foxy pattern of self-delusion and caprice, is an extremely unreliable narrator. His Andorra, unlike the actual nation, is on the ocean. La Plata, a paradisial yet haunted landscape of dopplegangers and repetitions, increasingly appears to be little more than a projection of his own inner life. There's a delicate poignancy to this novel and to Cameron's surprising conclusion, as the glittering world of Andorra, which proves a consolation for the terrible reality of Fox's true circumstances, dissolves like a fantastic sandcastle in the face of real life. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
The key to Cameron's (The Weekend, LJ 7/94) delightfully quirky new novel lies in the epigraph to Part 1, a quotation from Proust's Swann's Way. "Even from the simplest, the most realistic point of view, the countries which we long for occupy...a far larger place in our actual life than the country in which we happen to be." Alexander Fox, Cameron's narrator, had once read a book set in Andorra (written, as it happens, by an author who had never been there), which triggered his imagination so much that when personal tragedy strikes, he decides to flee to this Andorra himself, hoping to leave his memories and his past behind. Once there, he encounters an eccentric cast of richly drawn characters?from the kayaking matriarch Sophonsobia Quay, to the Ricky(s) Dent, an Australian couple fleeing their own demons, to the elderly Mrs. Reinhardt, who had been a friend of Rose Macaulay, the author of the book set in Andorra. He also finds, to his dismay, that he cannot entirely escape his past, that his life in this paradise of the imagination is becoming eerily reminiscent and that, again, he must flee. Cameron has created a stylish novel of deceit and desire with a twist at the end that makes it work all that much better. Highly recommended.-?David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersberg, Fla.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Margot Livesey
Andorra has been lucky in. . .the writers who have seen this small, land-locked country, tucked high away in the Pyrenees, through the prism of their own invention. . . . in his wonderful third novel, Peter Cameron both invokes this tradition and extends it. . . . [T]he world of Andorra is largely naturalistic. Characters eat, drink, profess love and lust, apply suntan lotion, move briskly from one place to another. . . [a] characteristic of this different world is the swiftness with which events and relationships develop. . . Like so many good novels, Andorra ends badly for the characters but well for the reader.


From Booklist
The narrator of Cameron's latest novel is running away from his past. The miniature European country to which he escapes is like an island; its single city, LaPlata, has "just one of almost everything, save churches and restaurants, of which it [has] only a few," and it seems to be inhabited primarily by exotic people: aged aristocrats, wanderers, and immigrants from elsewhere, most of whose lives, like the narrator's, seem to encapsulate unspeakable secrets. There is an atmosphere of foreboding in this latest fiction by the author of Leap Year (1990) and The Weekend (1994), not least because, for much of the novel, the troubled narrator keeps his secrets from the reader as well as the strange people he meets in Andorra. An affecting fictional journey into an unfamiliar geographic place and into the mind of a deeply troubled human being. Mary Carroll


From Kirkus Reviews
A precise, unsettling (if somewhat overlong) study of loss and duplicity. Cameron, the author of several well-received novels (The Weekend, 1994, etc.) and story collections (Far Flung, 1991, etc.), sets this terse work in the tiny country of Andorra, a mountainous, pocket-sized nation wedged between France and Spain. Alex Fox, his disaffected narrator, arrives there fleeing some at first unspecified horror, and finds the carefully ordered, slightly eccentric society of Andorra to be both enticing and soothing. He falls in with the Dents, a handsome, charming Australian couple who, separately, set out to seduce him. And he in turn begins to pursue the beautiful, hesitant Jean Quay, a young woman who seems to be locked in a constant struggle to suppress some disturbing incident in her past. Cameron deftly introduces a grim subtext to Alex's amours: The bodies of several men, strangled to death, wash up on a nearby beach. Ricky Dent disappears, and his frantic wife and a coolly charming policeman both wonder whether Alex has had something to do with it. Dent reappears but, convinced that he will be arrested for the murders, flees. Alex, who had come to Andorra looking for the solace of anonymity, allows himself to drift into an affair with the not-terribly-distraught Mrs. Dent and to entertain the idea of settling down with Jean. But things quickly go wrong. Alex, protesting his innocence, becomes the police's prime suspect in the murders. He isn't guilty, but an even more horrendous crime in his past spurs him to attempt to flee. That crime is revealed only at the last, and Cameron does a very deft job of gradually peeling away the seeming charm of the place and its inhabitants to uncover some nasty secrets underneath. While the pace occasionally lags toward the climax, Cameron's sly, complex characters, wonderfully intelligent dialogue, and masterful pacing combine to create a cumulatively powerful tale of the unforgiving workings of fate. (First printing of 25,000; author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
Alexander Fox, former owner of an antiquarian bookstore in San Francisco, journeys to a fictional Andorra, a country both beautiful and perilous, following an unspecified accident which has left his wife and daughter dead. Sun-splashed but oddly deserted, Andorra affords a personal refuge to Fox until a series of strange events occur. A handsome, promiscuous Australian couple, one prominent Andorran family, teasing socialites, and dead bodies found floating in the harbor cast a shadow over Andorra's picture-postcard surface. An outsider, Fox falls under suspicion of murder and endures a number of puzzling interrogations. Menacing locals and territorial policemen force Fox to contemplate a desperate escape from Andorra. Strong hardcover performance. * Outstanding reviews. * Excellent track record of Cameron's prior novel, The Weekend, in Plume.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

After a devastating personal tragedy, a man leaves the United States to begin life abroad. The country in which he finds himself is inordinately influenced by his imagination, and the events there are eerily reminiscent of his past, especially when he begins to fall in love with two women simultaneously. Andorra is a small country, populated (almost exclusively) by the ancient Mrs. Reinhardt, who outlives her lifetime lease on the penthouse of the Hotel Excelsior; the Dents, an Australian couple who share a first name, a huge dog, and a secret; Sophonsobia Quay, the kayaking matriarch of the powerful Quay family; her two beautiful but troubled daughters; Esmeralda St. Pitt, who runs a boardinghouse for those with impeccable moral credentials; Ali, the fatalistic purveyor of coffee; and Alexander Fox, who finds himself not only in a foreign country but also in a crisis of faith, conscience, and identity.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Concealing a dark fable about the transcendent power of the imagination within a slyly ironic tale about a man of refinement and vague intention traveling to a tiny European nation, Cameron's third novel (after The Weekend) displays his gift for language and narrative hijinks in fullest flower. The narrator, Alexander Fox, "compelled by circumstances to begin my life again in some new place," arrives by train in La Plata, the sun-splashed, oddly desolate, Monte Carlo-like capital of Andorra. He quickly becomes the cynosure of two contrasting La Plata families: that of neurotic Australian Ricky Dent, always accompanied by her large dog, Dino, who falls in love with Fox-as does her husband, a troubled bisexual composer also named Ricky Dent; and that of kayaking La Plata doyenne Sophonsobia Quay, whose uncle Roderick leases his home to Fox, and who seeks to marry Fox off to her waifish daughter, Jean. We gradually learn that Fox, a former bookseller and architect, is fleeing a tragedy involving the death of his American wife and daughter. When he is implicated in a series of murders in Andorra and his passport is confiscated by the police, he is forced to flee the country. Fox, whose evasive speech and manners begin to follow a foxy pattern of self-delusion and caprice, is an extremely unreliable narrator. His Andorra, unlike the actual nation, is on the ocean. La Plata, a paradisial yet haunted landscape of dopplegngers and repetitions, increasingly appears to be little more than a projection of his own inner life. There's a delicate poignancy to this novel and to Cameron's surprising conclusion, as the glittering world of Andorra, which proves a consolation for the terrible reality of Fox's true circumstances, dissolves like a fantastic sandcastle in the face of real life. (Jan.)

Library Journal

The key to Cameron's (The Weekend, LJ 7/94) delightfully quirky new novel lies in the epigraph to Part 1, a quotation from Proust's Swann's Way. "Even from the simplest, the most realistic point of view, the countries which we long for occupy...a far larger place in our actual life than the country in which we happen to be." Alexander Fox, Cameron's narrator, had once read a book set in Andorra (written, as it happens, by an author who had never been there), which triggered his imagination so much that when personal tragedy strikes, he decides to flee to this Andorra himself, hoping to leave his memories and his past behind. Once there, he encounters an eccentric cast of richly drawn characters-from the kayaking matriarch Sophonsobia Quay, to the Ricky(s) Dent, an Australian couple fleeing their own demons, to the elderly Mrs. Reinhardt, who had been a friend of Rose Macaulay, the author of the book set in Andorra. He also finds, to his dismay, that he cannot entirely escape his past, that his life in this paradise of the imagination is becoming eerily reminiscent and that, again, he must flee. Cameron has created a stylish novel of deceit and desire with a twist at the end that makes it work all that much better. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/96.]-David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersberg, Fla.

Sandra Scofield - Newsday

Artfully delicate...sly, playful, and ironic...a dark, intoxicating fable about the limits of imagination and the powers of memory.

Joan Larkin - Out

Aching elegy, acid comedy of manners, a literate mystery—Andorra is all these things and more.

Dennis Drabelle - Washington Post Book World