Name: Someday this pain will be useful to you
ISBN: 9780374309893

Cameron, Peter

Eighteen-year-old James living in New York City with his older sister and divorced mother struggles to find a direction for his life.

Someday this pain will be useful to you

Lindy

I first read this book in 2008 after fishing it out of the pile of recent YA acquisitions at the public library. At the time, I didn't know what to make of it; Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You has a distinctly literary feel compared to most YA fiction, and especially compared to most YA fiction in 2008. It's more of a character study than anything. I doubt it was written with young adult market at the forefront of the mind. 

Reading as a teenager, I thought the protagonist, James, was annoying as hell. At the same time, I recognized myself in James's sense of abject unhappiness too internally examined and too little expressed, which in turn made me even more miserable. Someday This Pain contains one of the most accurate depictions of prolonged depression I've ever encountered in fiction. 

The reason I decided to reread the book, though, has to do with how the following quote wormed its way into my head through the years:(view spoiler)[
  

  
    I knew I was gay, but I had never done anything gay and I didn’t know if I ever would. I couldn’t imagine it, I couldn’t imagine doing anything intimate and sexual with another person, I could barely talk to other people, so how was I supposed to have sex with them? So I was only theoretically, potentially homosexual.
  
 (hide spoiler)]
It really gets at the loneliness thing.

Jeannette Ordas

This gets a good solid 3.5. I liked James, the 18 year old "misfit" of a main character, but there was something that I couldn't break into. Maybe I couldn't relate to the wealthy New York lifestyle (although thanks to Gossip Girl I knew what the Jitney was) or maybe it was James and his use of language to block everyone out of his life that left me a bit cold. Regardless, it was enjoyable and I hope only the best for James.

Georgia Carr

I really enjoyed this. The plot's not complex and it can be slow in places, but James. He's just a great protagonist and this is a great coming-of-age novel.

Someday this pain will be useful to you

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