What I'm Reading: Someday This Pain Will be Useful to You
I found this book at the library right before Thanksgiving and, due to the nature of school, only got one chapter into it before I found I had renewed it three times and was no further than page thirteen. I dropped it off and resolved to recall it when I returned to Bloomington for the new semester. The second time around, I struggled again with the first chapter but found myself so engrossed by the rest to the point where I finished the book in three hours.
Someday This Pain Will be Useful to You has been compared by several other reviewers to The Catcher in the Rye and the comparisons are justified. James Sveck, an eighteen-year-old, affluent New Yorker spends the summer before his entrance to Brown looking at houses in the midwest, imagining his future lying somewhere outside of the East Coast, while working at his mother's art gallery. Reeling from events the previous April, James begins to confront those things he desires and clumsily attempts to build connections with those around him.
James is an intelligent, highly self-aware narrator, leading for some pretty deep thoughts but not much action. I struggled at times with the shallowness those who surround James, particularly his ineffectual psychiatrist, However, in terms of character study, Cameron gives up a character who is finely drawn, deeply conflicted, and, by the end of the book, may be able to have something along the lines of a happy ending.