Tag: camp damascus

Camp Damascus is a horror novel about a conversion camp and the dark secret embedded in a town. Rose is twenty but is treated like she’s much younger by her god-fearing parents, who try to force her to hide her autism and want to control her life. When Rose starts coughing up flies and seeing a strange woman in a red polo shirt that her parents don’t acknowledge, she starts to wonder what is going on, but her parents act like it is nothing. But Rose has questions, and those questions start to bring her back to the idea of Camp Damascus, the 100% success rate gay conversion therapy camp that makes their town famous.

I’d heard of Chuck Tingle as the internet-famous author of novelty erotica, but from the summary of this novel I had to give it a go, despite not knowing what Tingle’s horror would be like. Told from Rose’s perspective, Camp Damascus tells a gripping and strangely real-feeling (despite the demonic twists and turns) story of a conversion camp that makes you forget you ever went, and a woman forced to be someone she isn’t. The plot is straightforward, following a pretty predictable trajectory that goes in a satisfying way, though upon reflection I might’ve expected there to be more around Rose’s parents, who leave the narrative and never come back.

Rose is an interesting protagonist, a neurodiverse character who has to fight against the older adults in her life trying to quash anything she does that doesn’t seem neurotypical and someone who has always been told what to believe (or as far as she remembers) trying to work out what she does think as she realises this. As the book is quite plot-focuesd, you don’t get to see a huge amount of her relationships with other people, but later on in the narrative there is a focus on chosen family and the idea of both queer and neurodiverse people finding who they can be themselves around. The other major characters don’t get much backstory, partly due to the fact it is from Rose’s point of view and because the book is quite concise and doesn’t delve into character emotions that much.

I love queer horror and the demonic concept of this one combined with the horror of a conversion camp you can’t remember makes it a memorable read. There’s a few gruesome moments, but generally it’s pretty accessible for people who aren’t necessarily big horror fans, and I also think it would work well adapted into a film, as it is plot-focused and has some memorable set pieces. Some of the implications and nastier concepts weren’t really explored as much as I’d like (particularly one character who dies early on brings in some terrifying implications that don’t really get discussed in the narrative much), but I did like how quick and compelling it was to read.