The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore: A Novel

By Kim Fu

From the award-winning author of For Today I Am a Boy, a gripping and deeply felt 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Feb 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781443453615

Kim Fu

KIM FU is the author of the poetry collection How Festive the Ambulance and the novel For Today I Am a Boy, which won the Edmund White Award For Debut Fiction and the Canadian Authors Emerging Writer Award, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and a Lambda Literary Award, and was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. The novel was also longlisted for CBC’s Canada Reads. Her essays, journalism and reviews have been published in The New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement and The Atlantic. She is the associate editor of Maisonneuve.

Reviews for The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore

[froxgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A solid, well-constructed story of the 1990s, of five prepubescent girls of the Pacific Northwest in kayaks and in a tragedy that shapes some lives and seemingly leaves others relatively untouched. It's a short book which ideally should be read at one sitting, but if not, keep a cheat sheet handy. The alpha girls are Nita (three years a camper), Andee (charity case), and Dina (looks like a model). Isabel and Siobhan are the leftouts. The tale of how the resourceful girls make their way back to civilization (including one brief Lord of the Flies-type incident) alternates with their lives as women. Fu plots out just enough mystery to keep the reader advancing with the girls and looking back at them for foreshadowing and aftershocks."The class inched together through Ulysses. Even the students most inclined to showing off, the ones with an aching, holdover need to be recognized as special, who forgot they were in supposedly free-form adult discussions and raised their arms with quivering hands like the tails of agitated dogs, even they admitted they could not parse this web of near-infinite points."

[erickas-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore, five girls set out with their camp leader on a kayaking and camping excursion. Their leader decides to push the girls even harder, rowing for a farther, more secluded island for camping. No one from camp knows where they went, and no one from camp knows that these girls are stranded and alone. There is a pivotal point in these characters’ lives that changes the course of their adulthoods.

The novel is told in vignettes, back and forth in time from the adolescent girls at Camp Forevermore and then their later adult lives. Each girl’s story is told in turn. Not all the girls’ adult stories seem relevant to the camp incident, but perhaps that’s the point the author is subtly implying: some girls overcome, and some never recover. I appreciated that the characters were not cardboard stereotypes. The girls have different personalities and come from different backgrounds, and that adds to their experience and also to their suffering on the island.

I enjoyed this novel. The writing is intelligent and contemplative. The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore is a story of basest natures coming to the surface when faced with adversity with the follow up of how one trauma can infect people’s minds for the rest of their lives. I look forward to reading more from this author.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

[swibells · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

It's been a while since I DNF'd a book. I hate doing that because I keep thinking, "what if it had gotten better?"

But I just couldn't read this one anymore. The story starts with these four girls who are in a camp together. And then the next chapter goes on to tell the future of one of those girls. Then another 'in the camp' chapter followed by another girl's story.

I read half of the book before finally giving up. I just couldn't see the point of reading all of it. The past and the future, there were no connections. And it was getting quite boring. So, after a long struggle, I gave up.

The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore was, quite unfortunately, just not for me.

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked this book....didn't love it. This is the story of 5 girls who become lost and stranded on a remote island while attending camp. They are all around 11 years old. The format of the book is to separate short chapters about what happened at camp with longer stories about each of the girls...their backstories and what happened to them as they reached adulthood. Through these stories, we witness how that experience affected their choices and personalities. Some were more affected than others. Because the girls had almost no contact with each other following their rescue, the book is more like a series of connected stories than a novel. It's well written and the characters are all engaging and well developed.

[miss.mesmerized · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A summer camp for young girls aged nine to twelve. Mostly rich, but there are also some poor ones granted scholarships so that they can take part, too. The rules have been the same over decades, everything in Camp Forevermore is as it has always been. Part of the camp experience is a kayak tour which the girls complete in small groups and which leaves them on isolated islands for a night. Siobhan, Nita, Andee, Isabel and Dina thus are assigned to the oldest and toughest camp supervisor. Yet, unexpectedly, the girls do not end in the spot they were destined to but find themselves on a different, much larger and completely isolated island, their chaperone dead and they themselves running out of food. Now, the real survival lesson begins. The idea of a bunch of girls having to face raw nature and survive in unknown territory sounded quite intriguing to me. I anticipated it to be a bit like a girl version of the “Lord of the Flies” and I was curious to read how a group of girls develops under those conditions. Yet, the story of the lost girls is just a part of the novel. Their adventure is broken up by narrations about what happens to the girls later in life, their fate after surviving Camp Forevermore. This not only came a bit unexpected, but also shifted the focus away from the actual story to what such an experience makes with people and how they can never really get over it.Kim Fu has a very lively style of writing. The characters seem authentic and you quickly get a good idea of their different personalities. I liked her writing most in the parts where the girls struggle to survive, she is great at portraying their fears, hate and desperation. Without any question, the girls’ later lives are also interesting and the author actually did a great job in developing the girls further as adults. However, I would have preferred to read more about Camp Forevermore and the girls desperate situation.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore by Kim Fu is a series of interlinked stories about five young women. As young girls, Nita, Andee, Isabel, Siobhan, and Dina arrive at Camp Forevermore in the Pacific Northwest. The girls are ten and eleven years old and are all quite different from one another both culturally and in their personalities. Together they share a difficult experience when things go terribly wrong on an overnight kayaking trip. The story of this camping trip unfolds throughout the book but is inter-cut with stories about each of the girls, from their teenage years and on into their adult lives. The girls are all affected by this trip well into their adult years and eating disorders, failure to sustain relationships and feelings of low self esteem are all part of their stories. Their stories are told in a sensitive, skillful manner and the author keeps each characters distinct and vivid. I was very taken by The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore and the strengths and weaknesses it revealed. These are stories that I expect will linger in my mind for some time.

[quondame · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Tragedy of five girls who can't seem to get a grip on life after being left to their own resources for 2-4 days on a island after the death of their counselor. Or maybe they never would have. They none of them seem particularly interesting or bighearted or attractive.

[mutantpudding · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Interesting premise and diverse characters but left me feeling quiet bleh. I found some of the stories about the girls lifes relatable or poignant but overall they were just depressing and cliche.

Also, speaking as a former camp counselor who taught middle school girls to camp and kayak and then took them on wilderness trips, this story couldn't have happened without gross irresponsibility. The camp and the trip leader did so many things wrong it was almost unbelievable and it took me right of the story.

[jenarbucci · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book. It has something for everyone. I like the structure it was written in. I definitely recommend reading this.

[cherybear · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A page-turner. Five girls at a sleepaway camp get stranded on an island during a overnight kayaking trip. It's not exactly Lord of the Flies (thank goodness!), but it ain't pretty. Chapters alternate between the fateful trip, and the girls' later lives. Of course the experience affected their whole lives--I wondered how it would affect me.