Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron
I recently finished an interesting book, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, by Peter Cameron. I had never heard of the author or the book until I saw the “We Recommend” sticker on the book at McNally Jackson. It looked like a quick, interesting read, so I decided to pick it up and it turned out pretty good.
It is set in modern day New York City and is told by an eighteen-year-old boy the summer before he is supposed to leave for college. I thought this book was very similar to The Catcher in the Rye. If Holden had been alive in modern day New York, I think this a what he would have sounded like. I was reading Cameron’s book when I learned that J.D. Salinger died, and this might have made me draw more comparisons that I otherwise would have normally. But, that being said, the main character has a very unique voice.
This book has some great descriptions of our fair city. New York is described in numerous ways. I particularly liked a description of a corner of LaGuardia Place and Houston Street. Cameron writes, the area “has been fenced in and allowed to return to its primordial state, before the Dutch bought Manhattan from the Indians for $24.” Does anyone know if a fenced in park like this is there? I imagine it is, because the book seems pretty accurate, but I still want to head out there and check the description for myself. Especially because it leads the character to other interesting descriptions. Trust me, if you pick up the book, you will be hard pressed to put it down.
Later in the novel the author has some great comments on how quickly the city changes. The main character doesn’t want to go to Brown because he recognizes that the city will move on without him. He says, “Everything is always changing so quickly in New York City; if you go away for even a week you realize it: the Greek restaurant becomes an Ethiopian restaurant. The bakery has been transformed into yet another nail salon. I would be one of those people who emerged from the subway and looked around confusedly, having lost their sense of east and west, uptown and downtown. I’d start walking the wrong way, and have to stop and orient myself, like a tourist.”
It is great that the same island can stay like it was hundreds of years ago and change in a week. This is one of the reasons to love New York. Peter Cameron captures the city as seen through the eyes of a young man who is trying to figure out where in the world he belongs.
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- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
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