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Man Camp by Adrienne Brodeur

Summer's here and who's to say that camp is only for children or families?

Adrienne Brodeur has made a delightful foray into the chick lit genre with her comic novel, Man Camp. In it, two women who are frustrated with the wimpiness and cluelessness of the city men around them set up a camp where men can go to learn how to be men.

Sound offensive? Well, Brodeur really does manage to skirt the edges of offensiveness and by the end of the novel her characters have learned a lot from each other-including how to look beyond stereotypes.

Martha and Lucy are two best friends who are frustrated with the men in their lives. Lucy, a biologist, is deeply in love with her boyfriend Adam, but has grown frustrated with his insecurities and helplessness. Martha is ready to give up on dating after a string of really bad dates.

In fact, it is the wretchedness of her dating experiences that leads her to form a company FirstDate. Men hire her to go out on a first date and then afterward she gives them a critique and teaches them ways that they could be better dates. This advice ranges from not mentioning an ex-girlfriend in every sentence to restraining from entering meditative trances at the start of the date.

Cooper, one of Lucy's best friends from college, comes up to visit from his dairy farm in Virginia. He's amazed by the tales that the two women tell of the men in their lives. Then he overhears a joke that the two of them are making about sending the most hopeless men to a man camp. A few drinks later and Man Camp has become a reality.

Light and humorous, Man Camp moves swiftly from the streets of New York to the outbacks of the Appalachias. It's a short novel that can be easily read in a single sitting. It's crammed with hilarious characters that typically stop just short of being an archetype. They are characters who create one amusing situation after another that leave the reader laughing in sheer delight.

There's Eva, the lesbian bartender who points out that even the best man is only mediocre when compared to the relationships women have with their girlfriends.

There's Adam, the economist who is frightened by things that go bump in the night but does see the return on investment for the men who invest in Man Camp.

There's Bryce, the metrosexual who is really into skin and hair care.

There's Jesse, the anxiety-ridden children's book editor who is plagued by allergies and more fears than there are pages in the book.

There's Lucy who is conducting research into the mating habits of the wild and what humans can learn from them. In fact, she and Martha often make a game out of matching strangers at the bar with their animal counterparts.

Perhaps one of the highlights of the book for me was the scene where the truck taking the men to Man Camp gets a flat tire (one of the pre-arranged events). Cooper is amazed when he discovers that not one of the six men have ever changed a tire before. The men's responses are hilarious and illuminate the difference between life in a major metropolis and everywhere else.

While the premise in itself is amusing, I found I was drawn into the book and frequently smiling not just at the humor, but at the revelations Brodeur made. At the end of one chapter, I found myself saying aloud at a most unexpected juncture, "Now, that's what being a man is."

Manliness in 2006 is a complicated topic. The he-man mentality is a thing of the past that few modern men or women would find attractive. Yet, the other extreme is equally unattractive. Man Camp explores that spectrum and how individuals can find their spots on it. Eventually, nearly all of the characters learn something about both femininity and masculinity and its different expressions.

Man Camp is the debut novel of an author who co-founded Zoetrope: All Story with Francis Ford Coppola. She spent eight years with the magazine before deciding to write her own novel. She's now busy on her second novel and a screenplay.

--B. Redman