Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You
Peter Cameron
Farrar, Straus & Giroux

**** ½

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“It seemed that everyone else could mate, could fit their parts together in pleasant and productive ways, but that some almost indistinguishable difference in my anatomy and psyche set me slightly, yet irrevocably, apart.”

‘A Catcher in the Rye’ written from a queer perspective, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is a painfully insightful novel for young adults. The book’s narrator is James Sveck, an 18-year-old son of a divorced Manhattan lawyer father and art gallery owner mother, and most of the novel centres on conversations and seemingly everyday interactions between James and his family and therapist. As an extremely sensitive and intelligent teenager, these everyday interactions are fraught with meaning and symbolism for James, who struggles with, among other things, a deeply internalized homophobia. Cameron conveys James’ struggle to admit and accept his sexuality with a deft subtlety that is the story’s greatest strength. Rather than bible-thumping homophobes, James has caring parents who take the initiative to ask if he is gay and express their acceptance if he is. And so, the conflict with homophobia here is mostly internal, as James uses word play to dodge questions about his sexuality and concocts an elaborate joke to get closer to his crush John, the manager of his mother’s art gallery. All in all, anyone who has struggled to come out will appreciate this story and be both moved and humoured by the situations that can be so consuming at the age of 18 and nothing but a memory years later. This quiet and introspective story is a fantastic read for all ages.