Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

by Peter Cameron Narrated by Lincoln Hoppe

Overview

IN RE: James Sveck-eighteen-year-old New Yorker, charming, precocious, confused, doesn't quite fit in (doesn't really want to),
If: his future (i.e., college) seems completely meaningless, not to mention terrifying . . . *
Then: he'll start anew (move to the Midwest?).
In re: James Sveck-misunderstood by a capricious mother, a self-absorbed father, a mordant older sister,
Et alia: his Teutonic therapist, his D-list celebrity grandmother, his unnervingly attractive art gallery colleague . . .
If: What one wants is enigmatic . . .
Then: Life can be hell.
But: as the summer gets hotter, James comes to recognize the wrenching truth of his emotions.

James's archly comic bravado fuels this sharply observed novel of a teen adrift in an adult world, struggling to make sense of the problems of love and of lack. The engaging voice of our idiosyncratic antihero is deftly captured by the adroit prose of Peter Cameron. Often hilarious, deeply compassionate, smart, and lyrical, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is every bit as sui generis as James Sveck himself.

See also: Brown University; Sexual orientation (confusion thereof); Dinner theater; Poodles (standard).

Editorial Reviews

David Lipsky

…his best work—it's terrific, piercing and funny. The novel demonstrates every kind of strength. He offers dry-ice observations ("My grandmother is a firm believer in proper deportment; it is the closest she comes to any sort of religion"), memorable weather ("The sky went dark in a weird green swampy way that gave me a creepy end-of-the-world feeling"), and emotions I didn't believe had descriptions ("I ... just let everything go, turned the net of myself inside out and let all the worried desperate fish swim away"). It's as if Cameron had taken the tools earned over a whole career and applied them to the materials of a first book.
—The New York Times

Kirkus Reviews

Cameron's meticulously voiced novel begins as a comedy of manners, wittily disarticulating a certain class of New Yorker, so it takes the reader awhile to catch onto the fact that it's actually a story about the psychological pain that comes from loneliness and the difficulty in making emotional connections. The virtuoso first-person narrative is related by the protagonist, James Sveck, an 18-year-old boy who is as smart as he is alienated. Hiding his fears behind a curtain of disinterested contempt, James, who is gay but unwilling to either discuss or test it, likes only two people in his life, his wise and accepting grandmother and the man who manages his mother's art gallery. In the course of the story, James comes to realize that he can't wall himself off forever, finally making a maladroit and unsuccessful attempt to reach out. Cameron's power is his ability to distill a particular world and social experience with great specificity while still allowing the reader to access the deep well of our shared humanity. (Fiction. YA)

From the Publisher

His best work—it's terrific, piercing, and funny. The novel demonstrates every kind of strength.” —David Lipsky, The New York Times Book Review

“James Sveck is a brilliant wit of a character whose voice will echo long after his story ends.” —Kristin Kloberdanz, Chicago Tribune

“Deliciously vital right from the start . . . a piece of vocal virtuosity and possibly Cameron's best book . . . It is a bravura performance, and Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is a stunning little book. ” —Lorrie Moore, The New York Review of Books

“Cameron's prose handily marries the tangled logic of adolescence to simple, beautiful language.” —Peter Terzian, Newsday

“Beautifully conceived and written . . . funny, sad, tender, and sophisticated.” —Michael Cart, Booklist

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169205510
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	11/04/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

From Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

We sat for a moment in silence, and then the waiter delivered our meals. My father glanced at my plate of pasta, but said nothing. He cut into his nearly raw beef and smiled at the blood it drooled. "So," he said, after he had taken a bite, "you're not going to tell me."

"Not going to tell you what?"

"Whether or not you're gay."

"No," I said. "Why should I? Did you tell your parents?"

"I wasn't gay," said my father. "I was straight."

"So, what, if you're gay you have a moral obligation to inform your parents and if you're straight you don't?"

"James, I'm just trying to be helpful. I'm just trying to be a good father. You don't have to get hostile. I just thought you might be gay, and if you were, I wanted to let you know that's fine, and help you in whatever way I could."

"Why might you think I was gay?"

"I don't know. You just seem - well, let's put it this way: you don't seem interested in girls. You're eighteen, and as far as I know you've never been on a date."

I said nothing.

"Am I wrong? Or is that true?"

"Just because I've never been on a date doesn't mean I'm gay. And besides, no one goes on dates anymore."

"Well, whatever - normal kids hang out. They go out."

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