Do you know someone or have met someone who enjoys being alone, someone who is passive aggressive, extremely sarcastic, and is completely inappropriate? Well, that is James. James is all of the above. In the book Someday this pain will be useful to you by Peter Cameron, James has a huge life struggle that he must find a solution to. Underneath all the inappropriateness of James’s personality, he is just like every other senior in high school when it comes to college. He finds himself asking often “Where am I going to college?” James decides to take the easy way out and not go to college at all. After talking to his father and his mother about it, he still does not want to go. His struggles are either making himself happy and not go to college or make his parents proud and go to college, get an education, and start working on a career.
James is a lot more mature than most of the other boys his age. Instead of going to parties, going on dates with girls, and playing sports, he likes to look at houses in reserved places, go to work at an art store, and read books. James believes that all the activities the other boys his age do are silly or a waste of time. James would say that he could find other things to do with his spare time like read a book or do something educational.
I liked this book. I thought it was very realistic. It was realistic to me because there are kids and teenagers, like James, that are going through everything he went through. I also thought that the author used very good adjectives and made it easy for me to visualize what is happening in the story.