"Be patient and tough; someday this pain will useful to you"- OVID

I wish I had had this book when I was in my late teens. I loved this book more than any novel in the past few years. I put it in a league with two of my favorite novels about moving from young man to adult- The Amazing Adventures Of Cavalier & Klay by Michael Chabon & The Book Of Joe by Jonathan Trooper. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You by Peter Cameron grabbed me from the opening: "The day my sister, Gillian, decided to pronounce her name with a hard G was, coincidentally, the same day my mother returned, early and alone, from her honeymoon." This book is funny, hilarious really, but it is touching & heartbreaking. Not much happens & yet everything happens to our narrator- 18 year old James Sveck. He lives with his mother & sister in NYC. He works at his mother's art gallery & has lunch with his high powered & successful father once a week by appointment, His parents are worried about him & suspect that he is gay. James marks each chapter as a day in the summer of 2003 (with a few flashbacks to a breakdown that lands him in therapy) as he tries to sort out the state of his young adulthood. James is smart (he is obsessed with language), lonely, & he dislikes most people: “I don't like people in general and people my age in particular,” he explains, “and people my age are the ones who go to college…. I'm not a sociopath or a freak (although I don't suppose people who are sociopaths or freaks self-identify as such); I just don't enjoy being with people." He claims as his only friends- his wise & seasoned grandmother & the handsome smart art expert that runs his mother's gallery. James has been accepted at Brown, but instead of going to college, he wants to buy an old house somewhere in the Midwest (he spends a great deal of time taking virtual tours of houses on a real estate web site) & get a "regular" job. His point of view is funny, sensitive, sophisticated, vulnerable & urbane, but James is unable to relate & connect to the world. I liked him very much & I was sad as I came to the last few chapters of the book, knowing that I would miss James. Cameron's writing is brilliant, beautiful & precise. As James watches his grandmother sleep, he ponders why things have gone so wrong for him with wanting to: "Just let everything go, turned the net of myself inside out and let all the worried desperate fish swim away." There is so much to admire in this novel. Lose yourself in the life of James... you won't regret it.