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    Hole In My Life
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    Hole In My Life
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    Hole In My Life
    Audiobook4 hours

    Hole In My Life

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In the summer of 1971, Jack Gantos was an aspiring writer desperate for adventure, college cash, and a way out of a dead-end job. For ten thousand dollars, he recklessly agreed to help sail a sixty-foot yacht loaded with hashish from the Virgin Islands to New York City, where he and his partners sold the drug until federal agents finally caught up to them in a bust at the Chelsea Hotel. For his part in the conspiracy, the twenty-year-old Gantos was sentenced to serve up to six years in prison.
                In Hole in My Life, this acclaimed author of more than 30 books for young people confronts the period of struggle and confinement that marked the end of his own youth. On the surface, the narrative tumbles from one intense moment to the next as Gantos pieces together the story of his restless final year of high school, his short-lived career as a smuggler, and his time in prison. But running just beneath the action is the story of how Gantos-once he found himself locked up in a small, yellow-walled cell-moved from wanting to be a writer to writing, and how this newfound dedication helped him endure the worst experience of his life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 22, 2003
    ISBN9780807216460
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Hole In My Life

    4/5

    236 ratings30 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Surprisingly well done biography of the standard "I was stupid" teenager who ends up in jail on drug charges. While he was indeed stupid, he also learns from his mistakes and eventually becomes the writer that he had always dreamed of being. Buy and give to 8th graders.
    • 4/5
      In 1971, Jack Gantos took a summer job on a boat. He and his crewmates were trying to smuggle a shipment of pot from the Virgin Islands to New York City, They were caught, and Gantos was sentenced to six years in prison. This memoir describes how he survived and taught himself to write. Harrowing, suspenseful, funny and inspirational.
    • 4/5
      At nineteen years old, Jack Gantos is still stuck in high school, inspired to write and unsure how to improve his writing. Gantos, looking for money for tuition, agrees to help a crew smuggle a boat load of drugs into the U.S. Gantos then finds himself in prison facing violent circumstances he has never before experienced. Although this book unabashedly describes Gantos' mistake and the consequences without censorship,its is also humorous and inspiring and shows how one can turn their lives around. An engaging read appropriate for grade 10-12 students. This book is a Prinze honor book.
    • 4/5
      memoir of the author as a screwed up kid.
    • 5/5
      I spend so much time reading the new teen books I dont always think to read the classic teen novels. Hole in My Life is the biography of Jack Gantos chronicling his early years and time served in prison. I don't love his fiction novels but learning about his life was fascinating. The reality of his situation was hard to accept but readers can take away a lot of lessons from the mistakes Gantos made. This is a good nonfiction readalike for teens who enjoy Paul Volponi novels.
    • 4/5
      Gantos' memoir was a runner up for both a Printz Award and a Siebert Medal so I am in good company in my decision to rate this a 5Q on the VOYA scale. His story picks up shortly before his high school graduation and sets the scene for his short career in smuggling marijuana from the Virgin Islands to New York and his resulting capture, imprisonment and release.His memoir focuses on his teen and young adult years and free-spirited lifestyle during the early '70's, making it both relatable and interesting to YA readers. Because it is also a story of prison experience and smuggling, it would both interest those whose lives are touched by similiar experiences and those who know nothing about these experiences and are just curios. I suspect it may be somewhat more popular with guys because of the male perspective. Not all readers would be into this story, however, the beginning can feel a bit slow (though everything comes together by the end and every bit is necessary). Gantos also makes a plethora of literary references that aren't always clear because many of the works he mentions are lengthy classics or popular works of the time period. (Ex. " I ... felt as Marlowe had, searching the shoreline for Kurtz in Conrad's Heart of Darkness." p. 109) Missing out on those references doesn't impede the story though, and might inspire readers to pick up the works to which he refers.
    • 4/5
      Biography of author during his teen years into college. Mistakes made and lessons learned. Good read for teens.
    • 3/5
      teen/adult nonfiction; biography of a children's author/convicted felon. Drugs (or at least illegal drug trafficking) will ruin your life, and staying in school will help you get back out of jail... or something like that.
    • 3/5
      This reads YA, but good YA. My son read a good deal of Gantos' work when he was a small child, and I always approved of those books. (I really did not limit my son's reading, but admittedly some was age-inappropriate and there is no question I liked some more than others. Gantos' children's books are really good.) Gantos' story is instructive and he does not miss an opportunity to really drive home his message. He does not pander, but he also does not depend on subtext. Side note: I kept wishing he would realize his father was a narcissistic asshole, but no luck. I think his life would have been better if he knew that.
    • 5/5
      Jack’s desire to be a writer and to get money for college led him to take a desperate rust gat didn’t work out. For ten grand he agreed to crew a boat smuggling a ton of hashish from St. Croix to New York City. After weeks of sloppy and scared sailing he and the captain—the whole crew was the two of them—crashing into a New York marina. Two weeks later they had sold most of the dope when the Feds closed in on them, and Jack spent nineteen frightened months in a federal prison.Gantos’s memoir is brilliant in its simplicity and brutal honesty.
    • 3/5
      'Hmmm...we've chosen this as our all school Summer read, and in spite of the awards, I wouldn't give it more than 3 stars, and I'm not sure our student body is going to love it. Fortunately, it's only 124 or so pages, barely novel-length, so should be easy to get through. It is a good story, and maybe got the Printz award because it happened to a famous writer of children's books, so was quite surprising given his usual audience. The story does demonstrate how easy it is to get caught up in something dangerous, to get in over your head, and the consequences it may have, for Jack Gantos, it turns out, both good and bad.
    • 5/5
      One of the best memiors and best young adult books ever written. Absolutely brilliant!
    • 4/5
      Readers of Jack Gantos’ Joey Pigza children’s books might be surprised to find out that the author did time for drug running back in his teens. Or maybe not… The Joey Pigza character did struggle with impulsivity and despite being a good kid at heart, he often made poor choices. In this memoir, Gantos describes the series of events which led him to serve time in a federal prison for smuggling a ton of hash into New York. Gantos always knew that he wanted to be a writer, and having just won the 2012 Newbery Award we know he has achieved success at it, but this memoir details the circuitous route he took to writing children’s fiction. This book is hugely popular in our high school library - we have 5 copies that are always out. Not for elementary shelves though due to descriptions of prison rape and drug references.
    • 3/5
      Easy enough book to read. This is the story of Jack when he was a teenager and got mixed up in drug smuggling he eventually got caught and served nearly 2 years in jail. Ok story Jack tells his that he felt bad for getting caught but the love of books helped him through his time in prison.
    • 5/5
      Gantos’ story is surprisingly funny and honest. Reading this book is like sitting down with your older brother and hearing his story in a non-judgmental, honest tone. Gantos’ language is approachable for teenagers and he presents his story in a way that is readable and intelligent. It’s easy, as adults, to want to forget the mistakes we make as teenagers, but Gantos has well-preserved his ability to be honest with himself and his readers, making this story a reminder to teens and adults alike that teens are works in progress.
    • 4/5
      Federal prison—at the age of 20. Who thinks they will ever end up there? Certainly not Jack Gantos, the author of hole in my life. He is a young man responsible enough to finish his senior year of high school while living on his own. And he is smart enough and conscious enough to read novels and philosophy far beyond his years. But he was not experienced enough to say no to an opportunity to earn $10,000. But not many would say no in his situation: no college scholarships, no job prospects, no family holding him back, and a violent racial uprising happening just down the street. Taking the chance, Jack helps pilot a sail boat from St. Croix to New York, smuggling two thousand pounds of hash. Obviously, he is caught and sentenced to an undefined time in federal prison. While there, he begins to write, something he always knew he wanted to do, but never had the confidence. Besides, prison gives him plenty to write about: lice, homemade weapons, fighting, x-rays, rape, sodomy, parole hearings, Elvis impersonators, and of course, more drug use and smuggling. But writing is what is what he thinks most about, and it is what eventually becomes of him. Overall, what he discovers is what he aptly quotes Oscar Wilde for, “…it is not what one does that is wrong, but what one becomes as a consequence of it.”
    • 5/5
      Jack Gantos was a high school student living in Florida with his parents when his father got a job in Puerto Rico with a construction company. His family could not afford private school and he did not speak Spanish, so he convinced his family to let him move back to Florida and live with a family while he finished high school so he could eventually become a writer. While he was living without his parents, he started to get in trouble with alcohol and the family kicked him out of their house. He moved into a low rate motel and finished out the school year. After he graduated, he took a road trip through the Florida Keys and saw where some famous writers had lived to inspire himself. He moved to St. Croix to help his father with his business, but the race riots were really heated there during the 1970s. The business was not doing well and he had little time to write. He helped a man, Rik, who needed him to build a box with a false bottom. Rik was using the box to smuggle hashish out of St. Croix. Rik later recruits Jack to help sail a boat full of hash from St. Croix to New York with an eccentric British man named Hamilton. Their journey was long and filled with days of drug induced stupors. The two men arrive in New York only to be taken in by the Feds. Rik had gotten caught with the false bottom box and had set them up to make a deal with the police. Jack goes to prison where he serves 15 months and has a job as an X-ray technician. With the help of his boss and his caseworker, he gets out early on the conditions that he has a stable job, place to live and goes to school. He still has emotional anxiety about his time in jail, but I think that it helped him straighten out his life to become a successful writer. The book is beautifully written with lots of comedic moments, as well as melodrama, which is good for any young adult reader. He shares his story as a way to help motivated youth to not take the risky path that could lead to self destruction, but to just work hard and do everything right the first time. His time in prison could have been elaborated a little more, there seemed to be more about his boring time on the ship rather than his experiences in prison, which I think more people would be interested in hearing about. I really liked the fact that he did not seem to make excuses for his own actions, but just that he was young and looking for an easy way off of the island with bad decisions. Its a lesson we all learn at one point in our lives.
    • 2/5
      Jack Gantos is the 2012 Newbery Medal winner as well as a previous Newbery honor winner.In 1971 when he was 20 years old, he foolishly made a grave mistake when, for $10,000, he agreed to sail a 60 foot yacht packed with hashish from the Virgin Islands to New York City.This Printz award-winning autobiography focuses on his 15 month stint in federal prison.A testimony to overcoming flawed judgement in youth, moving on to an award-winning career, while this book is located in the YA section, it should have a label "For Mature Audiences".Guardedly recommended.
    • 3/5
      I really wanted to rate this book higher than the 3-stars I gave it, because I did enjoy it, and it was a page turner. However, I just can't. I liked the story, but I know that the young readers for whom the book was written will be a bit upset by the limited amount of time spent on detailing his experiences in jail. The one thing that haunts me the most about this book, is the old adage of there being two sides to every story, which I would love to hear from those that are part of this story: the boat mates, his parents, co-prisoners, the prison psychologist. I just get the feeling that there were important details that were left out that would identify his character, and more perspective would fill those gaps.A very nice compliment for a book, though perhaps backhanded, is that the book could have been a bit longer. With 50-100 more pages the book could have cured many of it's shortcomings.Despite my critique I would highly recommend this book for teens especially those that are "at-risk" or for students that show an interest in writing.
    • 5/5
      In prison for fifteen months, a young man has a lot of time to go from thinking about writing to becoming a writer. Popular and award winning author, Jack Gantos, shares a riveting memoir about his incarceration as a naive smuggler, and freely acknowledges his own shortcomings. Even more so, Gantos does not self-aggrandize his transition from drifting slacker to convict to living the life he imagined for himself. And he does another rare thing: he communicates the real joy he has found in life (i.e. well-loved books) without romanticizing or going over the top. I simply could not put this book down! Recommended for Grades 8 and up--especially anyone who dares to dream and work hard to improve their lot in life--and adults, too. "Hole in My Life" also presents numerous opportunities as a valuable resource in many different curriculum areas. Why can't all young adult non-fiction be THIS good?
    • 4/5
      This is an extremely candid autobiography of how Jack Gantos ended up in, and spent 15 months in a federal prison for drug smuggling as a young adult. It is an honest, sometimes harrowing, straightforward account of his fears, failings and mistakes. It was hard not to feel empathetic towards the author as I was reading this book and hail his success at finding his way as an author.
    • 4/5
      Jack Gantos tells his own true story, and it is amazing. His biography takes readers from his search for meaning as a young adult through his decision to committ a crime that threatened his future and put his life at risk. Although his story is compelling, I would highly recommend it to others (as a form of bibliotherapy), some younger readers may not find the storyline as exciting as some adults find it. There is also some mature content, but nothing too explicit for a more mature young adult.
    • 5/5
      How many children's book authors would write a memoir about serving time in federal prison for drug running during their young adult years? Jack Gantos would-- and did so brilliantly with this Prinze and Siebert award winning book. Written in a style that is very reminiscent of the Joey Pigza series, Gantos gives an honest and frank account of his late teen life and the actions and choices he made that led to his being convicted of drug running at age 19 and sentenced to federal prison for several years. The story is well told and compelling; funny and horrifying and sad and uplifting. We like Gantos and we care what happens to him, even as we cringe for him as he makes what we all know are terrible decisions that will have terrible consequences. And prison is tough-- Gantos is quite skillful in his ability to portray prison as a very violent and scary place-- full of sex and drugs-- and he does so honestly (important for all of us, yes, but especially so for young adults) but without sensationalizing it. No easy feat. And it was the constant violence and fear and hopelessness of prison life that forced Gantos to soul search and, finally, to make a decision to get serious about what he had always wanted to do--to write, to become a writer...a decision that not only carried him through the rest of his sentance, but one that Gantos credits with carrying him through the rest of his life. YES, YES, YES
    • 2/5
      With the mugshot on the front and all they hype about this being a "prison memoir," readers may be a bit mislead. While Gantos does indeed talk about his unique prison experience, that is not the content that makes up the bulk of this book. Because the reader knows that a stint in prison is in store for Gantos, he uses it as the shadow that darkens everything leading up to his capture by federal agents. This leaves the reader feeling that this path was completely inevitable, rather than something that happened to Gantos because of a series of choices he himself made.With an essentially uplifting ending, Hole in my Life fails to give the reader a true look into Gantos' life experiences or mind. His extended use of literary allusions a wide variety of sources keeps the reader either in the dark or on a goose chase looking for Gantos' meaning in other people's work. The overall effect is that of a watered down version of a story we have all already heard, with a large dose of "if I only knew then" on the side.
    • 4/5
      If the purpose of a YA memoir is to be a cautionary tale, I suppose this is a good one. Certainly it will make any teen think twice about accepting a job on a sailboat that's running drugs from St. Croix to New York. But perhaps Gantos's story of life in prison will not prove to be such a disincentive, since he gets a job in the prison hospital and never has to live with the general population. His biggest problem seems to be boredom. So yes, be cautioned, but Gantos's experiences overall are too atypical to really have much chance of changing the course of someone's life.
    • 4/5
      Jack Gantos uses this book to tell the story of how he ended up in prison at a young age. When he was a junior in high school, his family moved to Puerto Rico where he chose to work rather than finish high school. He earned some extra money wiring a tourist's hotel, and went back to Florida for his senior year of high school before rejoining his family, now on the island of St. Croix. Gantos, who had aspirations of becoming a great writer, quickly saw that he would go nowhere staying on St. Croix. When he received an offer of $10,000 to help smuggle a boat full of hash into the United States he saw an opportunity to earn enough money for a quality education as a writer. Making that journey was the mistake that changed his life. Gantos is perfectly frank about his previous actions and about life in prison. I thought it was a well-written and honest autobiography that shows how it is possible to change the direction of your life, and I really enjoyed it.
    • 4/5
      The author tells the story of how he ended up in prison for trying to sell drugs. It is told in narrative form. It contains some references to rape, violence, and drug use, but not in extensive detail.
    • 4/5
      Popular children's author Jack Gantos tells the true story of how he wanted to become a writer in his youth and his foolish choice to sail a ship carrying hash into NYC resulting in a six year jail term. Honest, gripping read.
    • 4/5
      This book is super-awesome and is whole-heartedly recommended to teens ages 12-18 and also for adults. Such a good book! Can't believe it all really happened!
    • 3/5
      Jack Gantos tells the story of his high school days, living in a cheap hotel, going to high school and working in Florida while his family moved to the Virgin Islands. Upon graduation he headed down to St. Croix to meet them and arrived in the midst of a Revolution. He ended up smuggling hash up to New York, where he was caught and served several years in federal prison. Throughout this time Gantos struggled to try to become a writer and it was only while he was in prison that he really learned what was important and why he was struggling so much as a writer.

      This was a great read. Gantos' narration style is first person friendly. It feels like someone is telling you their story and it works well for the message he is trying to convey. The text is never preachy or didactic even though there are clearly lessons to be learned from the author's story.

      Gantos also doesn't pull any punches. His story is very violent and terrifying at times and he could have glossed those things over but he didn't. He's honest about his mistakes and how long it really took him to figure things out.

      However I don't want anyone thinking this book is all gloom and doom. It does have it's funny moments, both funny ha ha and funny awkward. All in all it feels like a well rounded book that is short (which many of the teens I know love) with a lot of great discussion points.