Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

It's summertime and James Sveck is all set to go to Brown in the fall. The only problem is that James doesn't want to go to college. He doesn't like college students. In fact, he really doesn't like much of anyone.

His family isn't much help. His father consents to eating a token lunch with him now and then, but they haven't much to talk about. His mother has returned abruptly, prematurely, from her honeymoon, distraught, talking of divorce. His sister is acrimonious toward him and spends her time engaging in an affair with a married man.

James finds little in the world to love. He disparages the dog park; his job at this mother's art gallery; the sole artist who exhibits at the gallery, a man who creates garbage can art; the seminar on American government he was chosen to participate in, which ended in fiasco; his co-worker; even his therapist. James seems horribly ill-at-ease in the world.

The story is just a charmingly told harangue of life by a brilliant teenage misfit who continues to bumble through life, angering and alienating everyone he meets. Only his grandmother knows what to say to him, sharing her wisdom with him, a wisdom that seems to help him move on, to keep stumbling through the pain of life.

The problems James faces are not resolved by the end of the book, but James has acquired a perspective that this too shall pass. Somehow James manages to go away to college. Hope is seen when James keeps the houseful of possessions his grandmother leaves to him, not sure what he might need in the future.