Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel
    Ebook220 pages3 hours

    Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel

    By Peter Cameron

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 28, 2009
    ISBN9781429927130
    Unavailable
    Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel
    Author

    Peter Cameron

    Peter Cameron is the author of Andorra, The City of Your Final Destination, and Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Grand Street, and The Paris Review. He lives in New York City.

    Read more from Peter Cameron

    Related to Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

    Related ebooks

    YA LGBTQIA+ For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Tale As Old As Time: The Dark Appeal of 'Beauty And The Beast'

      Mar 26, 2017

      Disney's new live-action extravaganza is just the latest retelling of this classic fairy tale. But why do Beauty and her Beast have such a hold on us? And why are there so many versions of their tale?

      4 min read

    • Article

      Hauntings

      Jul 5, 2023

      Hauntings
      11 min read

    • Article

      Secrets That Hold Us

      Oct 21, 2020

      How could we have lived so long, on an island as small as Jamaica, without knowing our mother's mother still lived? The post Secrets That Hold Us appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      Home For The Holidays

      Aug 10, 2021

      It’s been a year since I’ve been home. I missed Christmas because of work, so Thanksgiving marks a full lap around the calendar. My mom’s been complaining lately about how difficult things have gotten for her. Everything seemed so out of reach, so im

      7 min read

    • Article

      It’s All Relative

      Aug 1, 2021

      It’s All Relative
      9 min read

    • Article

      Granny

      Jan 17, 2024

      Granny
      7 min read

    • Article

      Shanda

      Jan 1, 2024

      Shanda
      13 min read

    • Article

      Death Becomes Her

      Jan 21, 2022

      Death Becomes Her
      8 min read

    • Article

      Counter Waves

      Oct 23, 2020

      Counter Waves
      8 min read

    • Article

      Night Visions

      Sep 10, 2022

      Night Visions
      6 min read

    • Article

      Jars Of Gold

      Jul 3, 2020

      Jars Of Gold
      2 min read

    • Article

      Red Beans and Life

      Sep 1, 2022

      Red Beans and Life
      5 min read

    • Article

      Boutique Christmas

      Nov 5, 2019

      Boutique Christmas
      7 min read

    • Article

      Heave’s Whisky

      Feb 27, 2024

      Heave’s Whisky
      7 min read

    • Article

      Mail Call

      Apr 12, 2019

      Mail Call
      5 min read

    • Article

      Lineal Gaps

      Apr 6, 2021

      Lineal Gaps
      15 min read

    • Article

      Grandma’s Secret Recipe

      Aug 2, 2022

      Grandma’s Secret Recipe
      3 min read

    • Article

      Can’t Take It With You

      Apr 10, 2022

      Can’t Take It With You
      8 min read

    • Article

      Descent

      Jun 14, 2022

      People got out in strange ways. No stranger, I suppose, than the ways they got in. One year an American military helicopter flew too low over an Italian ski village, killing two families headed up the lift. A woman at Hillcrest had Italian citizenshi

      22 min read

    • Article

      David Sedaris

      Sep 15, 2017

      Our house on Emerald Isle, The Sea Section, is divided down the middle, and has an E beside one front door and a W beside the other. The east side is ruled by Hugh, and the bedroom we share is on the top floor. It opens onto a deck that overlooks the

      12 min read

    • Article

      Heirloom from an Angel

      Feb 27, 2020

      Heirloom from an Angel
      2 min read

    • Article

      Going Green

      Oct 1, 2020

      Going Green
      6 min read

    • Article

      From The heart

      Nov 26, 2020

      Dear Sally I was on a ghost hunting tour for charity that my daughter had arranged at Ruthin, Wales. I just kept taking photos even though I couldn’t see anything and when I got home the next day and uploaded them to my PC, I saw what looked like an

      5 min read

    • Article

      Benzo Mama

      Sep 7, 2021

      Benzo Mama
      30 min read

    • Article

      Guests

      Jun 15, 2019

      The month after our mother died, our father began bringing women home. It felt like a behind-her-back kind of operation. “I’m going to have a guest over tonight,” is what he would say. David and I stayed out in the living room, turned up cartoons, bu

      11 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

    3.5/5

    367 ratings33 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Seems you can't pick up a book with a male first-person narrator between the ages of 16 and 20 without reading on the back cover, "The next Holden Caulfield!!!!" or "JD Salinger for the 21st century!!" It's a pet peeve of mine.But, James Sveck? Really reminded me of Holden Caulfield. In fact, some of the things that made JD Salinger's protagonist hard to relate to are true of James as well. He's not a people person, and he does things that don't make sense to anyone but him. I suspect this is why some people didn't like this book, but I found James likeable and somehow more hopeful, even in his depression and isolation.
    • 5/5
      When eighteen year old James Sveck announces that he will most likely be forgoing his upcoming entrance to Brown University to instead pursue a piece of land not yet purchased in the Midwest, his well heeled New York City family protests. His flighty, thrice married, thrice divorced mother is only interested to the point of insisting that he subscribe to the services of the family shrink. His Partner’s Club dinning father, voices repeatedly that he will be throwing his life away by shirking his academic responsibility. His older sister, halfway through Barnard and dating a married man, lectures him on his stupidity. His therapist, recommended by his mother, simply parrots the wishes of his family. His only solace is found in his feisty grandmother and an older coworker at his mother’s gallery.Peter Cameron’s Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is an elegantly crafted tribute to the ever-growing stack of quarter-life crisis accounts in American literature. While the theme is not new (the book has received some serious flack for drawing on the likes of Catcher In the Rye), it is far from a mundane, rehashed storyline. Written from a teen view but not necessarily the voice of teen aged America (in fact, James will tell you that his position is exactly the opposite) the book superbly articulates the fluidity and uncertainty affixed to coming of age.I found myself cringing when I read other reviewers’ descriptions of James’s deep queries as “too adult”. I find that young adults are often far more elegant in their searching than we give them credit for, perhaps because of, not in spite of, their youth. As we age, much like the secondary adults in Cameron’s tale, we lose the ability to question, to act out, to rise above or sidestep authority.While it is billed as a young adult novel, the story touches on points that are relevant throughout life making it accessible and agreeable to a wide reading audience. If more young adult literature followed Cameron’s lead, I think I would find myself a bigger fan of the genre. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You may be small in size but its impact is nothing less than powerful and is one that should, without a doubt, make its way to your summer reading pile.
    • 4/5
      Written by Peter Cameron this is a slice of life story of a few days in time with an 18 year old boy who is troubled with the transition of living in society as we know it. Living in New York City with a high powered attorney for a father and a fashion diva for a mother who also dabbles in owning an art gallery James struggles with who he is and how he can function in a normal environment. He has always been a little different and as some have told him might be to smart for his own good. How often have we used that saying to describe somebody who is beyond his/her years and that knowledge gets them into trouble.The book moves slowly along as James is depicted as a troubled teen that had been prematurely exposed to adulthood and how he handles his troubled life. Much of the story is told through his interaction with his therapist as he describes episodes of his life focusing a substantial amount of time to a trip to Washington DC as he was chosen by the American Classroom to take an honored trip. He depicts his life as he works his way to understanding how to communicate with anyone and everyone preferring for the most part just not to speak in general.Since he is so intelligent he almost comes across as elitist and condescending to everyone he meets as he talks down to the common person who cannot possibly understand him for who he is. The book itself is very well written and the story is eloquent but to me personally seems self indulgent in the depiction of who this character might become. It rambles through the process of describing James and his issues from acknowledging his sexuality to his unhealthy family life.If you are into psychological overtures and how a person at a young age might come to deal with adult decisions in a methodically depicted story then this will be a good book for you. I didn’t dislike it but it was not a free flowing easy read either. I can’t be too negative since the book is so well written and you definitely connect with the character but in the end even with this bonding you are left with asking yourself why you took the time to read through the entire thing.I hope to read more of Peter Cameron but would also hope that in his next novel he might weave a story that is more directional with something slightly more specific in mind for an outcome. The ending seemed abrupt and contrived with no real transition from the story to the finality of the conclusion.
    • 2/5
      I didn't believe for a second that an 18 year old, even a haughty rich white 18 year old New Yorker Stuyvesant grad, would sound like this narrator. The narrator sounds like a snarky GWM in his 50s, who ridicules such imaginative new targets as gallerists, therapists, professors, and businessmen. Risky! Okay, maybe this could sound like someone who just graduated from Stuyvesant. Read that Andre Aciman book instead, if you want to read about educated rich gay boys.
    • 3/5
      This novel displays a unique adolescent voice in the narrator, James Sveck. I'm not sure I will ever understand his particular type of angst since his actions often seemed irrational to an extreme combined with an inexplicable predilection for misanthropy. The difficulties of teenage life living with a divorced mother are ratcheted up almost to the breaking point. However, his close relationship with his grandmother was an anchor both for the narrator and the reader. Overall the book was entertaining and ended on an upbeat note, which was a plus for this reader.
    • 5/5
      I have enjoyed many of this author's books but this was simply his best. This character, along with his grandmother, are so adorable and so appealing (despite Jame's embarrassing faux pas). Don't miss this book.
    • 5/5
      It’s summertime and James Sveck is all set to go to Brown in the fall. The only problem is that James doesn’t want to go to college. He doesn’t like college students. In fact, he really doesn’t like much of anyone.His family isn’t much help. His father consents to eating a token lunch with him now and then, but they haven’t much to talk about. His mother has returned abruptly, prematurely, from her honeymoon, distraught, talking of divorce. His sister is acrimonious toward him and spends her time engaging in an affair with a married man.James finds little in the world to love. He disparages the dog park; his job at this mother’s art gallery; the sole artist who exhibits at the gallery, a man who creates garbage can art; the seminar on American government he was chosen to participate in, which ended in fiasco; his co-worker; even his therapist. James seems horribly ill-at-ease in the world.The story is just a charmingly told harangue of life by a brilliant teenage misfit who continues to bumble through life, angering and alienating everyone he meets. Only his grandmother knows what to say to him, sharing her wisdom with him, a wisdom that seems to help him move on, to keep stumbling through the pain of life.The problems James faces are not resolved by the end of the book, but James has acquired a perspective that this too shall pass. Somehow James manages to go away to college. Hope is seen when James keeps the houseful of possessions his grandmother leaves to him, not sure what he might need in the future.
    • 4/5
      "An archly comic gem"By sally tarbox on 30 May 2017Format: PaperbackNarrated by sensitive and intelligent eighteen-year old James Sveck, this was quite a compelling read. His art-dealer mother has just remarried; his father won't hear of his not going to college - but James yearns to buy himself a house in the Midwest and keep away from his peer group. Meantime he works in his mother's gallery, falls for a co-worker and starts seeing a therapist. Both sad and funny, this is a little gem - a 21st century Catcher in the Rye.
    • 5/5
      A gripping look at a disaffected boy in his pre-college summer in New York. NYC references and arch, arty environment (James works in his mother's gallery) may put some readers off. Those who perservere will be rewarded with a funny, poignant look at a young man overcoming depression to reach out. Nice bonus: a warmly realized relationship with his grandmother.
    • 3/5
      Firstly, I read this book in one evening. Which should not suggest that it's facile, but rather that it's engaging. This book was a pleasure to read! There's more I could and should say, but I won't. This book is for people who are interested in the interior.
    • 5/5
      James Sveck, eighteen years old, lives in New York City. He lives with his several times divorced mother and his older sister , he sees his father every Friday for lunch, but of choice enjoys visiting his one time actress grandmother. He is bright, articulate, a thinker, and a loner; he finds peers insufferable and prefers the company of is elders, and maybe he has a crush on John, the manager of his mother's art gallery.James story covers the period leading up to his possible entry into college, something he decides he does not want to do, he would prefer his father spent the money on a down payment on the old and remote house of his dreams. It is an affecting and captivating story told by an interesting and endearing young man; and for anyone who is happy in their own company a story that will strike more than a few chords.
    • 5/5
      This book caught me eye during a YALSA program during the ALA Midwinter 2008 in Philadelphia. Mainly because the cover and description were somewhat vague as to the struggles of the main character. Wondering if maybe it was a young adult GLBT title (which I've never really read before) I was intrigued. The title did not disappoint. Other than having somewhat crappy names for the characters (I'm speaking of the sister's Professor boyfriend, who really shouldn't have been in the book at all), I really liked this book. It takes place in New York, and makes the probably mandatory 9/11 reference that all books being written at the time have to. Honestly, that doesn't go so much with the story. It's been compared to 'Catcher in the Rye.' James isn't Holden; he's way gayer, and that made it entertaining to read. When he talked about being on the bus and feeling so alone... I was that kid. This book is a good read for those of all ages, but obviously it's intended audience... GLBT young adults, are going to identify with something within these pages.
    • 2/5
      I listened to the audiobook version of this, and it never captured my attention. James just annoyed me, and I felt it hard to feel for him. While very little happened in the story, the ending felt rushed and pat, as if the author also got a little bored.
    • 5/5
      Here's a quick story about how one comes across a new author. Several months ago, I was trying to track down some gay YA books, and I ran across this book. Somehow, despite my intentions, the description of this book as really only qualifying as a YA novel because its protagonist is a teenager got my attention. Despite the fact that I started the search looking specifically for YA stuff, I ended up with this book on the strength of those reviews that it wasn't really meant for that audience. Curious, right? I think, though, that the book works both ways, and could probably be appreciated by anyone from their teens right on up.So yes, we do have our teenaged protagonist, James Sveck, a high-schooler getting ready to apply for university, but feeling ambivalent about the prospect. He lives in New York, some number of years after September 11, but finds himself intrigued by breaking out of the regular molds, and perhaps just going and buying up a house in the Midwest, cheap and easy, and live out there. The story, then, follows him finding himself and where he wants to go in his life.That's all easy to say, but the cast of characters here is really winning, even beyond James. The book is slim, and you get the story from James's point of view, but you still get a good sense of the reality of the other people in his world: his older sister, at university already and dating an affable professor; his divorcee mother, an art gallery owner who is getting married to her new beau; his father, the sort of executive that thinks ordering steak is definitely the manly thing to do; John Webster, the black gay gallery manager that helps run his mother's gallery. They all feel real, and motivated by their own desires and thoughts, even through James's filter, which is pretty remarkable for the space.But the stars of this piece are James, a really fully realized, conflicted teenager, and the dialogue. Oh my, the dialogue. I love it to bits. The book flies by quickly, because you just get lost in the talking. James in particular is that kind of sharp, smart, vulnerable teenager who pokes holes in things with his words, and Cameron nails it.I wanted to hold off saying it until I checked my list, and I have read a good number of good books this year, but I think this was probably my favorite. Not necessarily the best, but my favorite. I would recommend it most highly.
    • 5/5
      This book took me by surprise. I wasn't really sure what it was going to bring but I was very surprised. It's a small novel and it's not developed like longer books are, but every page, every word blew my breath away. It was very very real. I could see myself in these pages. James and I are not identical but we share a lot in common and being able to read his story was something I had never thought possible. How does an author capture all the impossible thoughts, the inner struggles? Cameron does this very well; perhaps by calling it as it is and not over analyzing it. I'm not sure entirely, but however he does it, it is a great success. I am so glad I found this book. It makes me feel as if I'm not so alone with how I feel some days. Recommended.
    • 5/5
      Eighteen year-old James is a brilliant and troubled young man who thinks an escape to a mid-century house in middle-America will cure his ennui and discontented feelings about life in general. He is an obsessive linguist who beautifully sums up to his therapist his word usage compulsion and his false representation to a friend in an online posting in this way: "They're both about the correct or proper way to do something. there is a correct and proper way to use words and there is a correct and proper way to behave with other people. And I behaved improperly with John and feel bad, so I compensate by obsessing with language, which is easier to control than behavior." There are so many, many sentences and paragraphs in this beautiful, melancholy book, and such amazing word play between all the characters - between James, his therapist, his mother and sister, and even with his prescient and compassionate grandmother, Like Holden Caulfield, James is wandering through the perilous landscape of adolescence, hampered by his examination of the human psyche and his lack of emotional padding. but as he makes his way through this sizzling summer week in Manhattan, he, with the abstract help of his quirky family, comes to realize that life will never be simple, or explained in simple terms but we march along nonetheless, doing the best we can. This book would only be of interest to the most literate of YA readers because there's very little action. It is mostly James' examination of self and life.
    • 5/5
      the label as the "catcher in the rye" for generation X & Y is very apt. this book is crawling into my soul as we speak. i think i'm gonna have to buy this one for my shelf.
    • 5/5
      I bought this book for the interesting title. I didn't think I liked the book at first. By the end I didn't want to leave the 18 year old main character, James. Throughout the book we peer in to James' messy, confused and angst ridden life. Why doesn't someone just step in and help him? Of course, no one can really help a teenager get through this time in life. It's part of becoming the adult of your future.
    • 3/5
      I'm not sure what to think of this book. The main character was funny at times and certainly interesting. He reminded me a great deal of my husband. The book however didn't seem to have a plot. It's more of a really long character sketch than a novel. Parts got very boring and tedious; especially the meetings with the psychiatrist. I don't think I'd recommend this book.
    • 3/5
      Narrated by Lincoln Hoppe. Hoo, what a downer of a book. It got all these rave reviews in the trades but I just couldn't identify with James' offputting loneliness. I was also dismayed to hear Mr. Hoppe's voice; I had so identified it with "Marcelo and the Real World." Actually it ended up being right for the depressed James. The therapy sessions were as tiring for me as for James. Highlights included James' relationship with his grandmother and his awful prank on John which helped take his superior loner self down a peg.
    • 4/5
      Struck this reader as a better Catcher/Holden Caulfield than Salinger's Catcher/Holden for current generations. (Karen)
    • 4/5
      Really liked this book. Teenage male protagonist struggling with life in Manhattan.
    • 4/5
      Read this in one sitting. I don't usually read YA but it was getting good crossover reviews too. I liked his voice. It was clever and polished, but in that way that things you write in your own head on the way home are. In the way they never are once you actually write them down and you wonder what happened. I could relate to his social awkwardness too, except that I was that way at 12, not at 18. There were a few bits that made me wish for post-its, to make note of the neat wording (but it was cold and I was snuggled in bed) and a few bits that made me chuckle. I have a 15 year old cousin; maybe I'll send her a copy and get that perspective.
    • 5/5
      Cameron's book is truly a fantastic book. Not only is the story well done, but the writing is brilliant. Someday This Pain Will be Useful to You is the story of James, an 18 year old boy trying to figure out, well, life. He's not sure he wants to go to college, he's not really sure about much of anything, except that he wants to be alone and he hates people his own age. Cameron handles everything perfectly -- the several time married mother, the distant and yet controlling father, the implied crush on the older coworker, and the love that James is seeking without really knowing it. I say perfectly because he manages to capture how our lives (the lives of the family, of teenagers, of college students, of everyone) are not perfect at all. James' view is one that anyone can relate too, not just teens. This isn't just because he's such a universal character in many ways, it's also because Cameron proves to be a sublime writer. James is smarter than many people (perhaps smarter than we are) and while in many books (YA or otherwise) this would be a turn off, it's the opposite. James doesn't lord it over his readers, just the people he encounters. And often, it's not even on purpose. While this book isn't about me, reading it I felt it had been written for me. It's an incredibly emotional (and emotionally driven) story about what it's like to grow up when you're already halfway there.
    • 2/5
      This was a beautifully written book with a main character I found to be entirely annoying. The angst is simply overwhelming and more pointless than usual. James is well-off and whiny and wearying to my ear. I didn't much care if he ended up going to the Ivy League school of his parents choice or not. The narrator was a little flat, too. It failed to work for me.
    • 4/5
      He's smart, witty, gay & unable to connect with the world. James's family is SO dysfunctional...almost a stereotype. James is hard to figure out and in the long run, I didn't care about him very much. The adult in me just wanted to tell him to "grow up".
    • 4/5
      Super-smart James tangles with his misfit status during and after his senior year in New York City. His razor-sharp observations are witty and often deadly accurate, yet James often uses his keen verbal ability to alienate other people.I have a soft spot for gifted, troubled narrators, and find a place for James among Holden and his peers.
    • 4/5
      James lives in New York City. His parents are divorced, and he lives with his mother and older sister. His only friends are his grandmother and the man who runs his mother's art gallery. His dysfunctinal family and uncertainty about the future combine with his loneliness to cause problems.
    • 3/5
      I read this book a while ago, so I don't remember enough to give a really detailed review. But the book really sucked me in. It wasn't a comfortable read by any means, James has too many issues for it to be that, but even so, when it ended I was really sad to leave him

      ETA. There's a movie version in the works for 2011 starring Toby Regbo as James. Exciting!
    • 3/5
      The writing is very competent, but the story just never comes together. I get that this may be the author's intent, and if so then it works. As a reader, though, I expected more of a pay off for having to deal with a fairly abrasive character. The novel seems more to just stop than end. The high point, though, is that this is one of the few novels I've read that contains interaction between therapist and patient that rings true.