Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel

Peter Cameron

Apr 2009 · Sold by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

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.

Ratings and reviews

Saw the movie but the book is surprisingly uninspiring. Very well written but the main character is frustrating.

Very well written Novel with a protagonist that is sometimes tough to feel for, and that is exactly how it's intended to be.

Live thus book. I love the way the main character tells his story.

About the author

PETER CAMERON is the author of several novels, including Andorra and The Weekend. He lives in New York City.