Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You Picador Edition Contributor(s): Cameron, Peter (Author) |
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ISBN: 0312428162 ISBN-13: 9780312428167 Publisher: Picador Paper OUR PRICE: $16.20 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: April 2009 Annotation: The opening lines of "Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You": "The day my sister, Gillian, decided to pronounce her name with a hard G was, coincidentally, the same day my mother returned, early and alone, from her honeymoon. Neither of these things surprised me. Gillian, who was between her third and fourth years at Barnard, was dating a "language theory" professor named Rainer Maria Schultz and had consequently become something of a linguistic zealot, often ranting about something called "pure" language, of which Gillian with a hard G was supposedly an example. My mother, on the other hand, had rather rashly decided to marry an odd man named Barry Rogers." "Someday this Pain Will Be Useful to You "is the story of a summer in the life of James Sveck, a sophisticated, vulnerable, and sexually ambiguous young man with a deep appreciation for the world and no idea how to live in it. |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Young Adult Fiction | Social Themes - Self-esteem & Self-reliance - Young Adult Fiction | Lgbt |
Dewey: FIC |
LCCN: 2009002718 |
Lexile Measure: 930 |
Physical Information: 0.8" H x 5.4" W x 8.2" (0.48 lbs) 240 pages |
Themes: - Topical - Self-Esteem - Topical - Adolescence/Coming of Age |
Accelerated Reader Info |
Quiz #: 117931 Reading Level: 6.0 Interest Level: Upper Grades Point Value: 9.0 |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is the story of James Sveck, a sophisticated, vulnerable young man with a deep appreciation for the world and no idea how to live in it. James is eighteen, the child of divorced parents living in Manhattan. Articulate, sensitive, and cynical, he rejects all of the assumptions that govern the adult world around him-including the expectation that he will go to college in the fall. He would prefer to move to an old house in a small town somewhere in the Midwest. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You takes place over a few broiling days in the summer of 2003 as James confides in his sympathetic grandmother, stymies his canny therapist, deplores his pretentious sister, and devises a fake online identity in order to pursue his crush on a much older coworker. Nothing turns out how he'd expected. Possibly one of the all-time great New York books, not to mention an archly comic gem (Peter Gadol, LA Weekly), Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is the insightful, powerfully moving story of a young man questioning his times, his family, his world, and himself. |
Contributor Bio(s): Cameron, Peter: - Peter Cameron is the author of Andorra (FSG, 1997), The City of Your Final Destination (FSG, 2002), and Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You (FSG, 2007). His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Grand Street, and The Paris Review. He lives in New York City. |