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Hardcover
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
It’s time for eighteen-year-old James Sveck to begin his freshman year at Brown. Instead, he’s surfing the real estate listings, searching for a sanctuary—a nice farmhouse in Kansas, perhaps. Although James lives in twenty-first-century Manhattan, he’s more at home in the faraway worlds of Eric Rohmer or Anthony Trollope—or his favorite writer, the obscure and tragic Denton Welch. James’s sense of dislocation is exacerbated by his willfully self-absorbed parents, a disdainful sister, his Teutonically cryptic shrink, and an increasingly vague, D-list celebrity grandmother. Compounding matters is James’s growing infatuation with a handsome male colleague at the art gallery his mother owns, where James supposedly works at his summer job but where he actually plots his escape to the prairie.
In the tradition of The Catcher in the Rye and The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Booklist has hailed Cameron as “one of the best writers about middle-class youth since Salinger”), Peter Cameron paints an indelible portrait of a teenage hero holding out for a better grownup world.
| Customer Reviews: |
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| Best for Older Teens |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I was surprised when I returned to high school to substitute teach nearly forty years after I had been a student that the same books were being given to the students to read: Scarlet Letter, To Kill a Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn, and Catcher in the Rye. Being required reading, the books weren't any better appreciated than when I was a high school student. However, in my reading program of free choice reading, a student occasionally chooses to read Catcher in the Rye and proclaims it a favorite book. Students like to read about themselves, and the story of Holden Caulfield captures the discomfort of a young person annoyed with his peers and cynical about an unappealing adult world looming just ahead.
James Sveck, the narrator of author James Cameron's Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, is a 2007 version of a young man facing the precipice of adulthood with more than an average dose of uneasiness. Not only are there cultural landmarks of today's world in this book--the Twin Towers, an easing acceptance of homosexuality--but the voice of James Sveck captures a twenty-first century culture more at ease with itself. The inept adults are more bumbling than sinister, the protagonist's anguish more tender than hostile.
Written for young adults and while not a challenging book to read for teenagers, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You will appeal the most to older teens and the more reflective and well-read of the younger teens. Though the protagonist is an eighteen-year-old young man, this book has so far been the most appreciated by my female students. Adults would enjoy reading this book also; our world seen through the eyes of a wisely observant adolescent serves as a worthy reminder of who we once were and what we once wanted.
Gaby Chapman
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| Highly Well-Written Read |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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It is quite evident that this book lacks a highly structured plot. Things happen, but there's no overarching big idea, other than a teen maneuvering his way through life. Normally, I'd be very disdainful toward this book. However, I found the writing to be highly crisp and realistic, as well as relevant to what teens really think about it. Cameron has created a highly interesting character who I found very easy to identify with. Another asset of this book is the fact that, yes, its narrator is a boy, instead of your typical YA girl narrator. I loved the originality of James' ideas (his little ramble on Mother Teresa made perfect sense to me and is the kind of thing I've been struggling with trying to convey). I liked that it was a very open-ended conclusion. We are given the tools, the characters, glimpses of their personalities, and in the end, it is up to us as readers to do what we are supposed to do and bring our own imaginations into the story to fill in the blanks. Masterfully done!
Rating: 5/5
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| My Review |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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My item was received in very good shape; however, it took a little longer than I expected to receive it.
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| another Holden |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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I did not like Catcher in the Rye. Not the first time I read it (in high school) and not the second time (in my 20s). And this book is little more than Catcher in the Rye updated for the 21st century. Except they still use words like "faggy".
James, which at least is a better name than Holden, has not been kicked out of school, but has just graduated from high school and is considering not going to college, although he's scheduled to begin at Brown in the fall. Aside from a somewhat meaningless job, he spends his time being introspective and disaffected, and seems determined to remain so. He does strange, antisocial things for no apparent reason and with no apparent thought of the consequences and then not quite understanding why people are upset about what he did.
I can't quite put my finger on why I had a problem with this book, or why I don't like Catcher in the Rye. I guess characters who know they're acting in an asocial way and refuse to acknowledge why other people might think they're a little strange just bother me. It's fine to be asocial, but a character (at least an intelligent character, as both James and Holden are supposed to be), ought to have enough insight to understand that they're outside the norm, which is going to be troubling to some people.
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| Something was missing |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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Overall, I think this book was well-written and did capture the 18-year old mindset pretty well. Yes, he was annoying and crabby at times, but I think that made it true to life. There was some humorous stuff, like the cartoonish characters on the DC trip and the artist with no name. But some of the characters were poorly developed, like the mother, who was too over the top. I just felt like something was missing when I finished this book. It just seemed to end without having gone anywhere. Sometimes that can work in a novel, especially one written from a teenager's point of view, but I didn't think it really worked here. It kind of made the read feel pointless when it just ended. A bit disappointing.
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