RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksThough determined to break away from the trappings of his mother’s calling, Scheinman has nonetheless penned a love letter to Austen superfandom, and with it a documentation of this fascinating literary bailiwick ... Camp Austen is a vivid and absorbing book. But don’t let its whimsical cover fool you: this is a solid work of literary scholarship and affecting biography as much as it is a fun romp of memoir and laugh-out-loud reportage. Readers unversed in the Austen canon will inevitably miss some of the cleverer references, but that is to be expected. The triumph of Camp Austen, however, is that there is something here for all readers, whether devoted Janeites, curious neophytes, or those of us just showing up for the clotted cream and costumes.
Kaitlyn Greenidge
PositiveElectric LiteratureGreenidge tells each of these segments individually, through a series of sections devoted to each person. Some of these sections are told through first-person and some are told through third-person, the vacillation of which can be jarring and seems slightly arbitrary, but through each perspective, the story is moved along. With this writing style occasionally comes the problem of some plot points being dropped at the end of the section and then never picked up again, or being watered down or jumped forward when they are picked up again ... While some of the transitions are bumpy, Greenidge has the gift of surprising, unique prose. Her voice is utterly refreshing. Each of her characters is richly different and fleshed out within the sections, and there is nothing interchangeable about any of them, which is a feat few debut authors can master ... It is so uniquely human and tells a different story that we must also learn and know: that different degrees of racism are still racism, that some of it is hidden and prettied-up but still breathes.
