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The Trouble in Me
Fourteen-year-old Jack is sick of his old self. When his family moves to a new rental home in Fort Lauderdale, he wants to become everything he’s never been before. Then in an explosive encounter, he meets his new neighbor, Gary Pagoda, just back from juvie for car theft. Instantly mesmerized, Jack decides he will do all it takes to be like Gary. As a follower, Jack is desperate for whatever crazy, hilarious, frightening thing might happen next. But he may not be as ready as he thinks when the trouble inside him comes blazing to life.
Inspired by a true summer misadventure the author “did my best to forget,” The Trouble in Me is a deeply personal novel that captures the ways in which young Jack Gantos first began to slide off track—a slide that in just a few years would culminate in his being locked up in federal prison for the crimes portrayed in the acclaimed memoir Hole in My Life.
Inspired by a true summer misadventure the author “did my best to forget,” The Trouble in Me is a deeply personal novel that captures the ways in which young Jack Gantos first began to slide off track—a slide that in just a few years would culminate in his being locked up in federal prison for the crimes portrayed in the acclaimed memoir Hole in My Life.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2015
46 people are currently reading
1017 people want to read
About the author
Jack Gantos
81 books549 followersJack Gantos is an American author of children's books renowned for his portrayal of fictional Joey Pigza, a boy with ADHD, and many other well known characters such as Rotten Ralph, Jack Henry, Jack Gantos (memoirs) and others. Gantos has won a number of awards, including the Newbery, the Newbery Honor, the Scott O'Dell Award, the Printz Honor, and the Sibert Honor from the American Library Association, and he has been a finalist for the National Book Award.
Gantos was born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania to son of construction superintendent John Gantos and banker Elizabeth (Weaver) Gantos. The seeds for Jack Gantos' writing career were planted in sixth grade, when he read his sister's diary and decided he could write better than she could. Born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, and raised in Barbados and South Florida, Mr. Gantos began collecting anecdotes in grade school and later gathered them into stories.
After his senior year in high school (where he lived in a welfare motel) he moved to a Caribbean island (St Croix) and began to train as a builder. He soon realized that construction was not his forté and started saving for college. While in St. Croix he met a drug smuggler and was offered a chance to make 10 000 dollars by sailing to New York with 2,000 pounds of hash. With an English eccentric captain on board they set off to the big city. Once there they hung out at the Chelsea hotel and Gantos carried on dreaming about college. Then, in Jacks own words, "The **** hit the fan" and the F.B.I. burst in on him. He managed to escape and hid out in the very same welfare motel he was living during high school. However, he saw sense and turned himself in. He was sentenced to six years in prison, which he describes in his novel -HOLE IN MY LIFE-. However, after a year and a half in prison he applied to college, was accepted. He was released from prison, entered college, and soon began his writing career.
He received his BFA and his MA both from Emerson College. While in college, Jack began working on picture books with an illustrator friend. In 1976, they published their first book, Rotten Ralph. Mr. Gantos continued writing children's books and began teaching courses in children's book writing. He developed the master's degree program in children's book writing at Emerson College in Boston. In 1995 he resigned his tenured position in order to further his writing career (which turned out to be a great decision).
He married art dealer Anne A. Lower on November 11, 1989. The couple has one child, Mabel, and they live in Boston, Massachusetts.
www.jackgantos.com
Gantos was born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania to son of construction superintendent John Gantos and banker Elizabeth (Weaver) Gantos. The seeds for Jack Gantos' writing career were planted in sixth grade, when he read his sister's diary and decided he could write better than she could. Born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, and raised in Barbados and South Florida, Mr. Gantos began collecting anecdotes in grade school and later gathered them into stories.
After his senior year in high school (where he lived in a welfare motel) he moved to a Caribbean island (St Croix) and began to train as a builder. He soon realized that construction was not his forté and started saving for college. While in St. Croix he met a drug smuggler and was offered a chance to make 10 000 dollars by sailing to New York with 2,000 pounds of hash. With an English eccentric captain on board they set off to the big city. Once there they hung out at the Chelsea hotel and Gantos carried on dreaming about college. Then, in Jacks own words, "The **** hit the fan" and the F.B.I. burst in on him. He managed to escape and hid out in the very same welfare motel he was living during high school. However, he saw sense and turned himself in. He was sentenced to six years in prison, which he describes in his novel -HOLE IN MY LIFE-. However, after a year and a half in prison he applied to college, was accepted. He was released from prison, entered college, and soon began his writing career.
He received his BFA and his MA both from Emerson College. While in college, Jack began working on picture books with an illustrator friend. In 1976, they published their first book, Rotten Ralph. Mr. Gantos continued writing children's books and began teaching courses in children's book writing. He developed the master's degree program in children's book writing at Emerson College in Boston. In 1995 he resigned his tenured position in order to further his writing career (which turned out to be a great decision).
He married art dealer Anne A. Lower on November 11, 1989. The couple has one child, Mabel, and they live in Boston, Massachusetts.
www.jackgantos.com
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 167 reviews
April 27, 2015
Classic Gantos, I totally loved this - it is quite a wild ride with pyromania on almost every page. Oh, how a young man can be led astray. It's an incendiary roller coaster of a read with some of the craziest antics you could imagine . . . don't try this at home folks. But in the end, Jack's moral compass never completely abandons him. A terrific bridge to Hole in My Life - JG's memoir. Phew, managed that without giving away any spoilers.
January 26, 2016
For all its occasional profanity and broaching of semi-adult themes, The Trouble in Me is Jack Gantos's middle-grade alternative to his 2002 teen memoir, Hole in My Life. It's at the high end of the middle-grade spectrum, but middle-grade nonetheless. Like the author's earlier memoir, The Trouble in Me is a musingly philosophical examination of an artistic mind in its nascent stages, carried this way and that by every change in the breeze, lacking a guiding presence to help push him over the hump of adolescence and make him get serious about the direction his life is heading. Fourteen-year-old Jack Gantos is a dazzling creative thinker with no moral compass, yearning for an authoritative influence—be it good or bad—to show interest and tell him what to do, and that deep-seated need to be managed takes a dark turn when his family's latest move to a new city lands him in the vicinity of a miscreant neighbor named Gary Pagoda, a kid several years older than Jack who recognizes the awe in his impressionable young neighbor and seeks to gain power over him. With Jack's overwhelming desire to be controlled, that's not a hard objective to accomplish, but neither boy knows how far their alliance will progress or how much trouble it will ultimately cause.
"I was always a liar. But one thing I failed to realize about being a liar is that you know when you are deceiving someone else, but when you deceive yourself you believe you are telling the truth."
—The Trouble in Me, from the Preface
Possessed of all his mother's emotional vulnerabilities, but without the backbone or grit she exemplifies to maintain balance in her relationship with Jack's no-nonsense, traditional-minded father, Jack falls under Gary Pagoda's spell, and the older boy sets to devour the fresh cut of tender meat. Jack aims to become a junior model of Gary, juvie ex-convict and neighborhood rabble-rouser notorious for the dangerous games he plays with his own younger brother and sister. Police are routinely dispatched to the Pagoda home to deal with Gary, who shows no remorse or fear of the law, just the same contempt he demonstrates toward everyone who gets in his way, including Jack. The fourteen-year-old Gantos boy is mesmerized by Gary's poise under fire, and resolves to replicate his rebel attitude as precisely as possible. Gary is amenable to Jack hanging around, but punches him hard in the face when his prying questions get on his nerves, teaching Jack to keep his distance and not nose around in Gary's sensitive business.
Jack's family tells him to be cautious of Gary, to recognize that the older kid considers him a stooge and is capable only of leading him down pathways of destruction, but destruction is exactly what Jack craves. In a lethargy of self-loathing boredom, Jack wants to torch the messy construct of his own life and watch it disintegrate to ashes in a controlled burn. The lily-livered kid of whiny voice and frail body he sees in the mirror is an abomination to Jack; he wants that kid gone, replaced by a more virile version cast in the Gary Pagoda mold. To prove his worth as Gary's understudy in small-time crime, Jack will do anything: lie elaborately to Gary's probation officer, perform crazy initiation rites, even participate in the Pagoda "Olympics", hazardous physical challenges that risk death or severe injury to inexperienced players. The more Jack's parents and older sister, Karen, urge him to stand up to Gary and not be a rag-doll for him to take out his rage on, the more stubbornly Jack holds to the hope that forsaking his weak old lifestyle is only possible if he sets the rickety structure ablaze and builds anew as an anti-socialite like Gary, who doesn't care what anyone thinks or how his actions today are bound to screw up whatever's left of his future. It takes one last ill-fated excursion with Gary to show Jack what's in store if he persists in living like the juvie scourge, completely abandoning the modest life he's lived so far and the dreams that filled his heart as a child. The Gary Pagoda way can be a lavish temptation from a distance, but Jack must decide whether he's ready to sacrifice tomorrow to the bitter catharsis of self-immolation, or if there's a more satisfying alternative to shoot for in the years to come. Can Jack ever reach his potential? More importantly, does he have the desire to try?
Jack's life doesn't end at fourteen, of course. Not only does the narrative continue in Hole in My Life, but Jack Gantos grew to become a bestselling, beloved children's author, so we know there's lots left to his story following the events of this book. In similar fashion to Hole in My Life, Jack plunges unfathomably deep into his teenage mind in The Trouble in Me, explaining his own odd yet profound thought patterns as a budding writer who would develop into one of the best in his profession. His insight is double-edged, the sword sharpened to a wicked edge by the candor and gloom of his pubescent brain as well as the wisdom acquired through a long, productive life, the sagacity of the older Jack Gantos throwing new light on his youthful observations. Jack points out that his peer influences weren't just instrumental to his behavior, they dictated it absolutely: "I guess you could boil it down to saying I was just a kid who was nice around nice kids and cruel around cruel kids." An utter blank slate presented to prospective friends, a gift for his own potential improvement and their amusement, Jack consented to be formed into whatever image his friends preferred, which meant major trouble when a cynic like Gary Pagoda got hold of him and decided to have some fun. Jack's personal nihilism knows no hesitation; thus his obsession with fire is born, which he views as both demolition crew and purger, each aspect promising to do away with the despicably weak Jack and allow someone to build a stronger, better version. Jack expresses his thoughts about fire early in the book as he peers into the lustful flames that jealously desire to take hold of him as people seem uninterested in doing. "The power of those flames was purifying. Staring into them set the canyons of my mind on fire and charred the weedy debris of dead thoughts. Flames were a natural language more powerful than the chaos of wind or water. Flames wanted to renew a world that had become tiresome and I wanted my tiresome world to be renewed. Even the wounded chambers of my heart, cleansed of all my father's awful insults, relaxed into a much-needed sleep. At that moment my dreams felt stronger than my weaknesses." Flirting with his own ruin is Jack's default, the internal condemnation of his childhood as the nest of a weak bird who never learned to fly right. Seeking redefinition in adulthood is Jack's only chance, he believes, but it has to be an adulthood divorced from the disgusting insipidness of his first fourteen years. If fire can incinerate the feckless teen he is now, then that makes fire a builder as much as a faceless vandal, and he'll love the flame with every ounce of devotion he later directs toward Gary Pagoda, who can pick up the work after the conflagration has dealt with the old Jack and begin the task of reconstruction.
Before tagging along after Gary, it was Jack's sister Karen he followed obsequiously, and her outlook on life had a powerful effect on him, opposite as it was to Jack's resolutions. Karen laments her loss of innocence as she approaches adulthood, the natural degrading of the baby she was born as into a less innocent version of herself. "Over time that baby grew up and slowly transformed into the misshapen girl I am now. I'm like a cliffside tree with branches desperately reaching to run away with the wind. I can't get out of here fast enough. I've grown up to become a grotesque version of that beautiful baby girl. How could that happen?" It does feel like life does that to us, contaminating the priceless purity we didn't even know we had as small children and turning us into sardonic shells of who we were and who we hoped with all our hearts to become, conduits of joy and achievement in a world happy to embrace our sincere contribution. Jack understands what Karen is saying. "I knew what she was talking about because when I was young I was exactly who I said I was, and did what I thought was right to do. Then as I got older I left that true self behind and began to know myself only through the eyes of the people around me. I reshaped myself and made it easier for everyone to think I was doing okay because I learned to do just okay things. But I wasn't okay. I was lost. Still, I loved the word okay. It was a magic word that cast a paralyzing spell over my parents while I was busy searching to become the opposite of okay." That's some heavy material, and it took me a long time to sort through it and understand, but it's worth the effort to do so. The excellence of The Trouble in Me is found mostly in these deep pockets of self-perception that apply to us all. But Karen isn't done speaking wisdom to Jack, drawing the distinction between their vastly differing views of themselves and the world: "I wish," she continues, "that there was a path of words I could walk down and they would lead me into a grotto pool where I could re-purify myself and return to the girl I was. But there isn't a path, or even a girl. She's gone, and I'm stuck trying to invent who I want to be, and I'm finding that figuring out who I want to be is so much harder than just being who I was when I was a little kid." Whether or not we're capable of crystalizing our feelings as Karen does in those paragraphs, we all deal with that internal conflict, the sense that we knew who we were until negative influences flooded us with toxins under guise of expanding our awareness of the world, but just ended up disillusioning us to the good inside and around us everywhere we go. Why can't we reclaim innocence lost or stolen? Or can we reclaim it, despite the cynicism of others who sneer at our attempts to return to a sweeter phase of our timeline, a mindframe more worthy of prolonged habitation? Just as Jack grasps at these esoteric concepts, usually coming up empty-handed but occasionally getting a handful of something more substantial than vaporous cloud, we find ourselves on the cusp of a great truth, if not quite having the momentum to push us over onto the other side of comprehension.
Karen caps her soul-searching with perhaps her most perceptive thought of all: "You'll see...Everyone foolishly goes through hating their past—when they should realize it is the one true thing you have." When we've lived only in the shelter of early childhood, we chomp at the bit for release, to gallop freely without restrictions to hedge our movement. But it doesn't take long for the arrows fired on us by the world to curtail our travel, leaving us bloodied and scarred when they strike tender flesh, causing us to fearfully turn back toward our earlier innocence we were so eager to leave behind. Jack and Karen go about ameliorating that disappointment in opposite ways: "The questions that troubled her were mine, too—they were the questions of people who didn't have faith in themselves. But how we built faith in ourselves was different. She wanted to rearrange her past and bring truth and purity back into her future. But I wanted to invent my future any way I could, and being a better liar was a better path. When I looked into the mirror I wanted to see a lot less of me and a whole lot more of some invented kid—Gary's kind of kid. That's the faith I wanted." Late in The Trouble in Me, Jack thinks back on Karen's words, also recalling her warning against personal stagnation, whose siren song gently threatens to entrance each of us in our own area of weakness. "The house is a bit of a monster, and slowly you belong to it and begin to function in it like living furniture that gets rearranged—you become another gear inside the machine of the house, or a hand puppet to your parents. You won't find freedom until you find yourself in a place that doesn't own you." Journeys of self-discovery can and will funnel toward stagnation before one is aware how far the apathy has advanced, consuming oneself in its misty tendrils of inertia. Activity and respite have to be delicately balanced or one side runs amuck, to the detriment of the person in whom that tyranny takes root. Jack's highest hurdle to clear is knowing when to be satisfied with himself and when to push for improvement, but he won't learn those lessons so they stick until the next part of his story, Hole in My Life. There's a lot left for fourteen-year-old Jack to learn, including the majority of his most painful lessons.
"When it came to my heart I felt everything okay, but when I tried to express my feelings the words came out of me like invisible ink."
—The Trouble in Me, P. 60
Like Hole in My Life, The Trouble in Me acknowledges that darkness is ever-present, and if we seek it we're sure to find a blacker abyss than we're ready to explore. In Karen's thought-provoking philosophy of the darkness within, we see the seeds of Jack Gantos's epiphany years down the road that the choice is his to turn away from darkness, to recognize that his happiest times were the childhood days with his family, who cared for him very much. There's no lasting thrill to be gleaned from wallowing in humanity's darkness, just hopeless despair, and it was Jack Gantos's resolve to mine his youthful halcyon days for comforting stories that led him to write about those experiences for youngsters to laugh at and enjoy. As Kate DiCamillo puts it in The Tale of Despereaux, "Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark." By celebrating the light in his own life stories, Jack Gantos met a version of himself he liked and wanted to share with others. This eventually led him out of the bleak oubliette his existence had degenerated into, toward a rewarding life with a family of his own. Rotten Ralph, Jack Henry, and Joey Pigza saved Jack Gantos even as they brought pleasure to new generations growing up and beginning to learn the life truths it took Jack decades to embrace. It was a good day for all when Jack Gantos turned it around. Like untold numbers of other young readers, I know I'll forever be grateful.
I have to say Hole in My Life is better than The Trouble in Me, but what sets this book apart is its awesome use of metaphor and delightfully extravagant description. Jack Gantos always has a way with words, but this is something new altogether, and I love it. The energy spent writing many of these paragraphs had to be enormous, and I like the feel of the eccentric words between my ears, playing hide-and-seek in the various regions of my brain. The descriptions are like opulent desserts, as captivating for the showmanship of their presentation as for the rich, decadent flavor promised by culinary confections sweetened with calligraphic swirls of sugar. I considered giving The Trouble in Me two and a half stars and rounding up to three, but I think I'll award it the full three. There's an uncomfortably graphic scene or two that might not be appropriate for younger kids, but we have a lot to learn from Jack Gantos's life story, and we're better off for his decision to share another portion of it in this soul-baring novel. The Trouble in Me and Jack Gantos are both keepers.
"I was always a liar. But one thing I failed to realize about being a liar is that you know when you are deceiving someone else, but when you deceive yourself you believe you are telling the truth."
—The Trouble in Me, from the Preface
Possessed of all his mother's emotional vulnerabilities, but without the backbone or grit she exemplifies to maintain balance in her relationship with Jack's no-nonsense, traditional-minded father, Jack falls under Gary Pagoda's spell, and the older boy sets to devour the fresh cut of tender meat. Jack aims to become a junior model of Gary, juvie ex-convict and neighborhood rabble-rouser notorious for the dangerous games he plays with his own younger brother and sister. Police are routinely dispatched to the Pagoda home to deal with Gary, who shows no remorse or fear of the law, just the same contempt he demonstrates toward everyone who gets in his way, including Jack. The fourteen-year-old Gantos boy is mesmerized by Gary's poise under fire, and resolves to replicate his rebel attitude as precisely as possible. Gary is amenable to Jack hanging around, but punches him hard in the face when his prying questions get on his nerves, teaching Jack to keep his distance and not nose around in Gary's sensitive business.
Jack's family tells him to be cautious of Gary, to recognize that the older kid considers him a stooge and is capable only of leading him down pathways of destruction, but destruction is exactly what Jack craves. In a lethargy of self-loathing boredom, Jack wants to torch the messy construct of his own life and watch it disintegrate to ashes in a controlled burn. The lily-livered kid of whiny voice and frail body he sees in the mirror is an abomination to Jack; he wants that kid gone, replaced by a more virile version cast in the Gary Pagoda mold. To prove his worth as Gary's understudy in small-time crime, Jack will do anything: lie elaborately to Gary's probation officer, perform crazy initiation rites, even participate in the Pagoda "Olympics", hazardous physical challenges that risk death or severe injury to inexperienced players. The more Jack's parents and older sister, Karen, urge him to stand up to Gary and not be a rag-doll for him to take out his rage on, the more stubbornly Jack holds to the hope that forsaking his weak old lifestyle is only possible if he sets the rickety structure ablaze and builds anew as an anti-socialite like Gary, who doesn't care what anyone thinks or how his actions today are bound to screw up whatever's left of his future. It takes one last ill-fated excursion with Gary to show Jack what's in store if he persists in living like the juvie scourge, completely abandoning the modest life he's lived so far and the dreams that filled his heart as a child. The Gary Pagoda way can be a lavish temptation from a distance, but Jack must decide whether he's ready to sacrifice tomorrow to the bitter catharsis of self-immolation, or if there's a more satisfying alternative to shoot for in the years to come. Can Jack ever reach his potential? More importantly, does he have the desire to try?
Jack's life doesn't end at fourteen, of course. Not only does the narrative continue in Hole in My Life, but Jack Gantos grew to become a bestselling, beloved children's author, so we know there's lots left to his story following the events of this book. In similar fashion to Hole in My Life, Jack plunges unfathomably deep into his teenage mind in The Trouble in Me, explaining his own odd yet profound thought patterns as a budding writer who would develop into one of the best in his profession. His insight is double-edged, the sword sharpened to a wicked edge by the candor and gloom of his pubescent brain as well as the wisdom acquired through a long, productive life, the sagacity of the older Jack Gantos throwing new light on his youthful observations. Jack points out that his peer influences weren't just instrumental to his behavior, they dictated it absolutely: "I guess you could boil it down to saying I was just a kid who was nice around nice kids and cruel around cruel kids." An utter blank slate presented to prospective friends, a gift for his own potential improvement and their amusement, Jack consented to be formed into whatever image his friends preferred, which meant major trouble when a cynic like Gary Pagoda got hold of him and decided to have some fun. Jack's personal nihilism knows no hesitation; thus his obsession with fire is born, which he views as both demolition crew and purger, each aspect promising to do away with the despicably weak Jack and allow someone to build a stronger, better version. Jack expresses his thoughts about fire early in the book as he peers into the lustful flames that jealously desire to take hold of him as people seem uninterested in doing. "The power of those flames was purifying. Staring into them set the canyons of my mind on fire and charred the weedy debris of dead thoughts. Flames were a natural language more powerful than the chaos of wind or water. Flames wanted to renew a world that had become tiresome and I wanted my tiresome world to be renewed. Even the wounded chambers of my heart, cleansed of all my father's awful insults, relaxed into a much-needed sleep. At that moment my dreams felt stronger than my weaknesses." Flirting with his own ruin is Jack's default, the internal condemnation of his childhood as the nest of a weak bird who never learned to fly right. Seeking redefinition in adulthood is Jack's only chance, he believes, but it has to be an adulthood divorced from the disgusting insipidness of his first fourteen years. If fire can incinerate the feckless teen he is now, then that makes fire a builder as much as a faceless vandal, and he'll love the flame with every ounce of devotion he later directs toward Gary Pagoda, who can pick up the work after the conflagration has dealt with the old Jack and begin the task of reconstruction.
Before tagging along after Gary, it was Jack's sister Karen he followed obsequiously, and her outlook on life had a powerful effect on him, opposite as it was to Jack's resolutions. Karen laments her loss of innocence as she approaches adulthood, the natural degrading of the baby she was born as into a less innocent version of herself. "Over time that baby grew up and slowly transformed into the misshapen girl I am now. I'm like a cliffside tree with branches desperately reaching to run away with the wind. I can't get out of here fast enough. I've grown up to become a grotesque version of that beautiful baby girl. How could that happen?" It does feel like life does that to us, contaminating the priceless purity we didn't even know we had as small children and turning us into sardonic shells of who we were and who we hoped with all our hearts to become, conduits of joy and achievement in a world happy to embrace our sincere contribution. Jack understands what Karen is saying. "I knew what she was talking about because when I was young I was exactly who I said I was, and did what I thought was right to do. Then as I got older I left that true self behind and began to know myself only through the eyes of the people around me. I reshaped myself and made it easier for everyone to think I was doing okay because I learned to do just okay things. But I wasn't okay. I was lost. Still, I loved the word okay. It was a magic word that cast a paralyzing spell over my parents while I was busy searching to become the opposite of okay." That's some heavy material, and it took me a long time to sort through it and understand, but it's worth the effort to do so. The excellence of The Trouble in Me is found mostly in these deep pockets of self-perception that apply to us all. But Karen isn't done speaking wisdom to Jack, drawing the distinction between their vastly differing views of themselves and the world: "I wish," she continues, "that there was a path of words I could walk down and they would lead me into a grotto pool where I could re-purify myself and return to the girl I was. But there isn't a path, or even a girl. She's gone, and I'm stuck trying to invent who I want to be, and I'm finding that figuring out who I want to be is so much harder than just being who I was when I was a little kid." Whether or not we're capable of crystalizing our feelings as Karen does in those paragraphs, we all deal with that internal conflict, the sense that we knew who we were until negative influences flooded us with toxins under guise of expanding our awareness of the world, but just ended up disillusioning us to the good inside and around us everywhere we go. Why can't we reclaim innocence lost or stolen? Or can we reclaim it, despite the cynicism of others who sneer at our attempts to return to a sweeter phase of our timeline, a mindframe more worthy of prolonged habitation? Just as Jack grasps at these esoteric concepts, usually coming up empty-handed but occasionally getting a handful of something more substantial than vaporous cloud, we find ourselves on the cusp of a great truth, if not quite having the momentum to push us over onto the other side of comprehension.
Karen caps her soul-searching with perhaps her most perceptive thought of all: "You'll see...Everyone foolishly goes through hating their past—when they should realize it is the one true thing you have." When we've lived only in the shelter of early childhood, we chomp at the bit for release, to gallop freely without restrictions to hedge our movement. But it doesn't take long for the arrows fired on us by the world to curtail our travel, leaving us bloodied and scarred when they strike tender flesh, causing us to fearfully turn back toward our earlier innocence we were so eager to leave behind. Jack and Karen go about ameliorating that disappointment in opposite ways: "The questions that troubled her were mine, too—they were the questions of people who didn't have faith in themselves. But how we built faith in ourselves was different. She wanted to rearrange her past and bring truth and purity back into her future. But I wanted to invent my future any way I could, and being a better liar was a better path. When I looked into the mirror I wanted to see a lot less of me and a whole lot more of some invented kid—Gary's kind of kid. That's the faith I wanted." Late in The Trouble in Me, Jack thinks back on Karen's words, also recalling her warning against personal stagnation, whose siren song gently threatens to entrance each of us in our own area of weakness. "The house is a bit of a monster, and slowly you belong to it and begin to function in it like living furniture that gets rearranged—you become another gear inside the machine of the house, or a hand puppet to your parents. You won't find freedom until you find yourself in a place that doesn't own you." Journeys of self-discovery can and will funnel toward stagnation before one is aware how far the apathy has advanced, consuming oneself in its misty tendrils of inertia. Activity and respite have to be delicately balanced or one side runs amuck, to the detriment of the person in whom that tyranny takes root. Jack's highest hurdle to clear is knowing when to be satisfied with himself and when to push for improvement, but he won't learn those lessons so they stick until the next part of his story, Hole in My Life. There's a lot left for fourteen-year-old Jack to learn, including the majority of his most painful lessons.
"When it came to my heart I felt everything okay, but when I tried to express my feelings the words came out of me like invisible ink."
—The Trouble in Me, P. 60
Like Hole in My Life, The Trouble in Me acknowledges that darkness is ever-present, and if we seek it we're sure to find a blacker abyss than we're ready to explore. In Karen's thought-provoking philosophy of the darkness within, we see the seeds of Jack Gantos's epiphany years down the road that the choice is his to turn away from darkness, to recognize that his happiest times were the childhood days with his family, who cared for him very much. There's no lasting thrill to be gleaned from wallowing in humanity's darkness, just hopeless despair, and it was Jack Gantos's resolve to mine his youthful halcyon days for comforting stories that led him to write about those experiences for youngsters to laugh at and enjoy. As Kate DiCamillo puts it in The Tale of Despereaux, "Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark." By celebrating the light in his own life stories, Jack Gantos met a version of himself he liked and wanted to share with others. This eventually led him out of the bleak oubliette his existence had degenerated into, toward a rewarding life with a family of his own. Rotten Ralph, Jack Henry, and Joey Pigza saved Jack Gantos even as they brought pleasure to new generations growing up and beginning to learn the life truths it took Jack decades to embrace. It was a good day for all when Jack Gantos turned it around. Like untold numbers of other young readers, I know I'll forever be grateful.
I have to say Hole in My Life is better than The Trouble in Me, but what sets this book apart is its awesome use of metaphor and delightfully extravagant description. Jack Gantos always has a way with words, but this is something new altogether, and I love it. The energy spent writing many of these paragraphs had to be enormous, and I like the feel of the eccentric words between my ears, playing hide-and-seek in the various regions of my brain. The descriptions are like opulent desserts, as captivating for the showmanship of their presentation as for the rich, decadent flavor promised by culinary confections sweetened with calligraphic swirls of sugar. I considered giving The Trouble in Me two and a half stars and rounding up to three, but I think I'll award it the full three. There's an uncomfortably graphic scene or two that might not be appropriate for younger kids, but we have a lot to learn from Jack Gantos's life story, and we're better off for his decision to share another portion of it in this soul-baring novel. The Trouble in Me and Jack Gantos are both keepers.
August 14, 2015
No one can tell a story like Jack Gantos. This novel is a prequel to his compelling memoir, A Hole in My Life, one of my favorite books. It takes place over a period of about a week or so as Jack comes under the thrall of the JD neighbor next door to the Gantos family's new rental. Readers will laugh rather guiltily and may even read with their eyes covered as Jack heads earnestly into one calamity after another. There's underlying sadness here, especially for readers familiar with A Hole in My Life. While we all know it worked out in the end, this vivid portrait of a lost boy definitely made me think about the possible lost boys in my life.
May 16, 2018
This makes my heart hurt for Jack Gantos. No one matches that guy for unflinching emotional honesty.
September 18, 2015
First off, I'll say that it was interesting, and more than a bit troubling, to read what a sad and troubled life Jack Gantos led as an adolescent. I know that in later years he was able to finally turn his life around and not end up like his juvenile delinquent neighbor Gary Pagoda. But did I enjoy reading it? Not really. It was a difficult read for me. I'm not sure who the intended audience for this book is. I wouldn't want any troubled middle school or high school students reading this and getting crazy ideas about trying some of the extremely stupid and dangerous stunts Gary talks Jack into, most of them involving lots of fire and things that explode. There was also one very disturbing scene involving a puppy that I could hardly bear to read. Luckily, it turned out okay; only because the puppy squirmed out of Gary's hands and not because Jack's moral compass suddenly turned on, which is what I was hoping would happen.
I saw a little bit of Joey Pigza in Jack with all the craziness and some of the stunts he got involved in. But there was always so much humor and Joey's gentle spirit in the Joey Pigza books. In this book I found none of that humor or gentleness, just a lot of sadness. I will probably read Hole in My Life to find out about the next chapter in Jack's life. From what I've read, things only get worse for him in that one. But sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you finally wake up and do something to change your life for the better. It seems that's what had to happen in the author's case.
I saw a little bit of Joey Pigza in Jack with all the craziness and some of the stunts he got involved in. But there was always so much humor and Joey's gentle spirit in the Joey Pigza books. In this book I found none of that humor or gentleness, just a lot of sadness. I will probably read Hole in My Life to find out about the next chapter in Jack's life. From what I've read, things only get worse for him in that one. But sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you finally wake up and do something to change your life for the better. It seems that's what had to happen in the author's case.
September 17, 2015
ahhh this book was so tense it made my stomach hurt the entire time I was reading it. I'm not really sure how to rate it? There's definitely skill involved in writing that kind of intensity, but I didn't really enjoy reading it, and I'm not really sure who the intended audience is? I loved Hole in My Life, but I felt like that had a more structured narrative? This one is just like, Jack's neighbor Gary keeps encouraging Jack to do an escalating string of shitty things, and Jack does them.. but since it's all set before Hole in My Life, if you've already read that one, then you know that the worst is yet to come. But also, Hole in My Life ends with like... a clear resolution, where Jack ends up in jail. This just ends with vague uneasiness. Which I guess is fine? I mean, lots of times life leaves you with vague uneasiness.
I guess kids who like Ellen Hopkins-style books about kids doing fucked-up stuff would probably like this? But unlike Ellen Hopkins et al, you don't have the sense that Jack has been mistreated (which I think is the appeal of a lot of Ellen Hopkins etc, feeling righteous indignation on behalf of the teens whose abusive homelife pushes them toward drugs/crime/whatever?), just that, for whatever reason, he feels unfulfilled and wants to set shit on fire. Which again--I know there are kids like that? So maybe they will like this book?
???
I guess kids who like Ellen Hopkins-style books about kids doing fucked-up stuff would probably like this? But unlike Ellen Hopkins et al, you don't have the sense that Jack has been mistreated (which I think is the appeal of a lot of Ellen Hopkins etc, feeling righteous indignation on behalf of the teens whose abusive homelife pushes them toward drugs/crime/whatever?), just that, for whatever reason, he feels unfulfilled and wants to set shit on fire. Which again--I know there are kids like that? So maybe they will like this book?
???
June 9, 2016
I really didn't want to like this book...Jack was such a wimp, so desperate, so needy. Then I remembered that Jack's relationship with his father was emotionally and verbally abusive, his mother was just doing her best to keep the family together while pregnant, and his sister just wanted to have some kind of existence separate from her family. So why wouldn't Jack seek validation from the juvenile delinquent who lived next door? My empathy for Jack increased as I progressed through the book.
January 5, 2023
I rated the book The Trouble in Me by Jack Gantos a solid 3 stars because it was not what I hoped it was going to be but there were still some good parts. Set in Fort Lauderdale Florida during summer break, the story follows 14 year old Sailor Jack as he tries to change his personality and become a follower. I found this book when looking through my library database. The title seemed interesting so I read the summary and it caught my attention the idea of a kid trying to change his personality. What I really liked about it was when Jack first meets the neighbor and immediately wants to be like him. His thoughts are very deep and help to give context for the rest of the story. Jack first notices the neighbor Gary Pagoda digging a hole in his yard and yelling his mother. At this moment Jack has a switch of thought that will change his future. This event contributed to my overall rating because it was a very interesting and great event, it was not what I expected though because it had a lot of deep thought and less action than I expected. I also liked when Jack starts to follow Gary and his actions and becomes a completely different person. Jack decides to burn all of his old journals in an effort to get rid of his old self and completely become Gary’s follower. This event contributes to my rating because it was described in great detail by Jack on what he wanted with his life and why he was changing this was cool to see how one person had completely changed him. This book is important because it shows the reality of someone following another just to be like them and how only one event can change the future dramatically. The story relay teaches the reader about how thoughts are very important and should be taken seriously. I am definitely going to read the follow up to this book Hole in My Life also by Jack Gantos. I would read it because the story was interesting. If you are looking for a very interesting book filled with something relatable then I would read this book.
November 14, 2022
The Trouble in Me was an interesting exciting and unexpected book. But I personally didn't enjoy it because of how slow it was, how boring the book got, and how the characters were developed. I wished Jack Gantos had a faster pace in the book and characters were better. Overall I didn't hate reading the book I just didn't love it.
September 18, 2017
Jack Gantos is so engaging in person, I was interested in reading more about his life. I heard him read a bit from this one.
***
2017 Popsugar Challenge BONUS - Recommended by an author you love (love is a strong word here, but...)
***
2017 Popsugar Challenge BONUS - Recommended by an author you love (love is a strong word here, but...)
October 2, 2017
I really enjoyed and connected to Gantos' 'Joey Pigza' books growing up. As a troubled child they made me feel understood. While I didn't connect as much to 'The Trouble in Me' quite as much (I was never THAT troubled) I still enjoyed reading it.
Gantos captures what it's like to grow up being uncertain of yourself and this novel encapsulated that without any condescending "it gets better" type messages. There isn't any forced optimism nor is there any over the top cynicism. There is just truth. You're with Jack's stream of consciousness throughout, which makes it hard to judge or condemn his objectively boneheaded decisions.
December 25, 2015
Without a doubt, Jack Gantos is a gifted storyteller. Somehow he manages to make the events in his own life take on an almost-larger than life quality and have significance for others. Readers of his earlier memoir Hole in My Life will gain even more insight into what led to the mistakes he made in that book through reading this one, and those who haven't read that one will want to find it immediately after finishing this one so they can accompany Jack on his fateful journey. In this book, Jack is fourteen and dealing once again with his family's move, this time to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Unsure of himself and longing to be something other than what those around him expect, Jack is drawn to Gary Pagoda, a neighbor just out of juvenile detention. Gary is everything Jack thinks he wants to be--popular, attractive to girls, and a leader--and Jack is willing to do anything Gary asks. Readers will be horrified by the Pagoda Olympic Games of the Future in which Gary sets off explosives in the family pool while Jack and Gary's younger brother Frankie dive deep into the water to avoid the explosions. Jack's efforts to become someone else and follow Gary's lead are exemplified in his burning of his school papers and trashing of his clothing, and while it won't be clear to Jack that Gary is only amusing himself with Jack, readers will quickly realize this while wondering just how far Jack will follow Gary. One of my favorite passages in this well-written account is this one, which sums up the book perfectly: "But the trouble came with me like an ember, and it burned slowly, and hid cleverly enough to where I couldn't feel it, and by the time it flared up again it was too late to put it out, and once more I followed in the shadow of someone else" (p. 204). Packed with humor, pathos, and fiery moments that burn away to reveal what is at the core of this talented wordsmith, this book is one that readers will want to hand to adolescents on the same path. Not a word needs to be spoken. The book speaks for itself.
October 17, 2015
Once again Jack Gantos shows why he's the master of blurring memoir and novel. In The Trouble in Me, Gantos writes about his thirteen year-old self wanting to be anyone but himself by trying to be the older kid across the street. From the start, this is obviously going to be as much cautionary tale as exploration of a personal episode that would shape his life to come. Book Jack knows that the stunts probably aren't that wise, but hey, the kid across the street is so cool that it's got to be better than being 'Jack Gantos.' As usual the writing is superb, this time meant for YA and the upper level of middle grade readers. The book isn't quite as compelling Dead End in Norvelt, but for readers who are trying to figure out who they are just like Jack was at a pivotal time of his life, The Trouble in Me resonates. Though, there, perhaps, ought to be a warning of 'Don't do what I did' on the cover.
Note: ARC received via Amazon Vine in exchange for review.
Note: ARC received via Amazon Vine in exchange for review.
January 1, 2016
After The Hole in Me, what was left for Jack Gantos to say about his life? Turns out, quite a lot. Covering a mere two weeks in his life, this fictionalized memoir shows how Young Jack starts heading down the road that leads to prison; it is all the fault of Gary, or was there something else going on that leads Jack to that path? This is less of a "there but for the grace of God go you" cautionary tale than a "so, you wanna hear a story?" book, one that has more resonance because of the biographical nature.
ARC provided by publisher.
ARC provided by publisher.
October 26, 2015
Not sure how to rate this because I'm not sure what this book is supposed to be. It came cataloged as fiction and the professional reviews call it fiction but it seems like memoir to me (and the reviews on Goodreads keep calling it memoir.) I also have an issue with the audience for this book. I loved "Hole in My Life" which was solidly for high school students. This is supposed to be for middle school students. Would I recommend this to a 7th grader? Not sure I would. I'm also not seeing the humor that others are seeing. Overall disappointed and confused. Good thing it was short.
November 4, 2015
This is kind of a fictionalized account of something that actually happened to the author. It's a lead in to how he ended up in trouble in his book The Hole in Me. I couldn't really get into it and this might be my own fault b/c I was really reading it more to figure out if I had it cataloged correctly (which I'm still not sure about).
February 4, 2016
Not as good as Hole in My Life, but I appreciated learning some of the childhood back story that led Gantos down the path that ultimately landed him in prison.
March 23, 2016
"The Trouble in Me" by Jack Gantos appeared on several 2015 "best" lists. I have had the pleasure of meeting Jack Gantos and receiving a signed copy of his books on a couple of occasions. I received "The Trouble in Me" last fall at the NCTE/ALAN conference. I have read "Hole in My Life," which was published 2002 but takes place BEFORE "The Trouble in Me."
I very much respect Gantos as a writer. "The Trouble in Me" is beautifully written. However, reading his latest is not a pleasant experience by any means. Though the 208 page read takes place over a short period of time, it reads excruciatingly slowly. Part of it is the dread the reader feels, anticipating what is to come. Part of it is the excruciating detail with which Gantos relays the events he covers in the book. For instance, in the first chapter ("Fire"), Gantos details the first time he meets and interacts with Gary Pagoda. Though the event is an important turning point in his life, the beginning of a downward spiral, it is painful to read. I kept thinking, "Get on with it." He describes walking into the backyard to perform the duties he is charged with in preparation for his father's birthday party - to light the grill and get the burgers going. In actuality, this event probably took only a matter of minutes to transpire - yet it took twenty-six pages to get to the point where he reveals his love of fire and blows it all. Case in point: "...I had killed time by drop-kicking chunky fists of white coral across our back canal. I was trying to punt a hunk through a worn motorcycle tire that loosely swayed from a banyan tree like a black coral snake masquerading as a knotted noose." Strong, poignant images? Yes. Foreshadowing? Yes. Painful (26 pages of this)? Yes.
And sad. So very sad. Gantos, who was preparing to begin eighth grade year in his sixth school, was raised by a verbally and emotionally abusive father. He didn't fit in at school or at home. He tells us that he hated himself. He wanted to be someone else. And it is at this point that the cruel, violent, angry juvenile delinquent - Gary Pagoda - enters his life. He wants to BECOME the older boy - not just to be his friend and/or sidekick. Some especially salient things he tells us:
p. ix - "I was always a liar. But one thing I failed to realize about being a liar is that you know when you are deceiving someone else, but when you deceive yourself you believe you are telling the truth."
p. 6 - "I hated the word 'manly' and what it meant..."
p. 8 - "He could be rough with his words, but he wasn't a hitting dad. Hitting dads are a menace, and that old black rubber noose hanging across the water was a reminder that some guys grow up to be meaner that their dads."
p. 33 - In fact I didn't know anything about cool shoes or jackets or motorcycles or tow trucks or fireworks or cigarettes or girlfriends who drive trucks or whiskey or gangs or stealing cars or secret clubhouses or love or prison or soul music or real cruelty or anything like that. But in an instant everything I did know seemed childish and I was suddenly in a rush to catch up to everything he knew and felt." (And there is the ENTIRE story - in only two sentences - and not 208 pages!)
p. 34 - "'Understanding is what you want from your girlfriend,' he sagely replied...'Control,' he said with contempt, 'is what your parents want from you. Tattoo that on your sailor beanie and sign it Gary Pagoda.'"
p. 35 - "'This is the day I realized that the unknown self deep within me is the self to pursue, and that the known self is the superficial self I have to burn all the way down to the ground without ever looking back.'"
p. 36 - "And who knows, maybe I wanted the trouble, too. I didn't see it coming, but the moment it showed up and said, 'Follow me' that is just what I did."
p. 39 - "Mom had a tender inner life, which I feared because instinctively I knew her kind heart had given birth to my own heart and I had her same softness within me, but I was a boy and not a mom and it seemed impossible, even wrong, that we could share the same emotional life. Still, we did, though tenderheartedness expressed itself differently through us."
p. 39 - "For me, sadness was a repulsive flaw I hid darkly within myself so I couldn't find it. I was ashamed of my sadness and knew it was a sign that I was not brave; instead I was a coward, and being a coward was the source of the whole world's scorn."
p. 93 - "I had always respected the strength of silence. Whenever I picked up a smooth river rock with my hand I held it to my ear. The silence within it was as vast as the universe. In time it would erode and slowly its drifting particles would fan through the atmosphere and silently cast their pinprick shadows onto the earth."
p. 97 - "If silence made me empty inside, then Gary's words would fill me."
p. 108 - "'It makes me think you don't understand our relationship. So let's make this clear once and for all. You' - and he drove his finger into my chest - 'get to be next to me. That's the gift I'm giving you in return. You got that?' 'Sure,' I said, breathing harder. 'Does that mean I get to end up being like you?' 'Don't be ridiculous,' he said as he lit a cigarette. 'Even if you could be me you don't want to be me. Heck, I don't even want to be me.'"
p. 151 - "...if i had a pet to love me I could love it back and nothing could come between us. Maybe that was the best relationship in the world and I wouldn't be staring out the window all day like a puppy looking for an owner."
p. 174 - "'With Gary I'm sort of the second-in-command,' I said proudly. 'The second-in-command is my favorite role,' she [his mom] said in a warm voice. 'It's like being a secret boss. The second-in-command can be a good influence and a clever leader by helping to point out the right path to the boss. Like me and your dad. He might be the boss because he's the man of the house, but I'm the leader. I'm the one that gives him good ideas and makes him think he thought of them.That was true. 'But is that good enough for you?' I asked. 'Yes,' she replied. 'Because I know I'm the real boss...'"
p. 176 - "...I was so two-faced I couldn't really be alone because each face took turns hating the other."
p. 178 - "I suppose all or us look at ourselves from time to time and wish we were bigger, stronger, meaner, tougher, and more vicious than the next guy. Being smart just isn't enough. I could be smart on my own at night alone in my room, but I wanted to be fearsome when I was out in the world walking bravely down dark streets or walking indifferently down those blindingly bright school hallways during class breaks. I wanted to be a man."
p. 192 - "'Congratulations,' he said bitterly. 'Instead of you stepping into my shoes, I've knocked you clean out of yours.' He was right in a way he didn't fully understand. But I did. The more true he had been to himself, the more false I had been to myself."
p. 193 - "...it's a lot easier to lose yourself inside the maze of someone's life you think is better than your own than it is to stand alone under the noonday sun and be your true self."
p. 204 - "I suppose if I really had become like Gary I'd have destroyed myself as he was doing, but I wasn't him. Nor was I his angelic opposite - a 'good' version of him. It was just me all along playing at being his imaginary friend."
This is such a sad, sad story. It is a testament to how writing can be our therapy and help us work through our issues - even those that are decades ole.
I question who the audience for this book is. It is marketed as a middle school read - the protagonist is about to enter eighth grade. However, the story is told to us by the adult Jack Gantos who has the benefit of time and perspective to enhance his understanding of this time in his life. The perspective is very adult and complex. I am not sure that most middle schoolers will have the patience and life experience to connect with this book.
I very much respect Gantos as a writer. "The Trouble in Me" is beautifully written. However, reading his latest is not a pleasant experience by any means. Though the 208 page read takes place over a short period of time, it reads excruciatingly slowly. Part of it is the dread the reader feels, anticipating what is to come. Part of it is the excruciating detail with which Gantos relays the events he covers in the book. For instance, in the first chapter ("Fire"), Gantos details the first time he meets and interacts with Gary Pagoda. Though the event is an important turning point in his life, the beginning of a downward spiral, it is painful to read. I kept thinking, "Get on with it." He describes walking into the backyard to perform the duties he is charged with in preparation for his father's birthday party - to light the grill and get the burgers going. In actuality, this event probably took only a matter of minutes to transpire - yet it took twenty-six pages to get to the point where he reveals his love of fire and blows it all. Case in point: "...I had killed time by drop-kicking chunky fists of white coral across our back canal. I was trying to punt a hunk through a worn motorcycle tire that loosely swayed from a banyan tree like a black coral snake masquerading as a knotted noose." Strong, poignant images? Yes. Foreshadowing? Yes. Painful (26 pages of this)? Yes.
And sad. So very sad. Gantos, who was preparing to begin eighth grade year in his sixth school, was raised by a verbally and emotionally abusive father. He didn't fit in at school or at home. He tells us that he hated himself. He wanted to be someone else. And it is at this point that the cruel, violent, angry juvenile delinquent - Gary Pagoda - enters his life. He wants to BECOME the older boy - not just to be his friend and/or sidekick. Some especially salient things he tells us:
p. ix - "I was always a liar. But one thing I failed to realize about being a liar is that you know when you are deceiving someone else, but when you deceive yourself you believe you are telling the truth."
p. 6 - "I hated the word 'manly' and what it meant..."
p. 8 - "He could be rough with his words, but he wasn't a hitting dad. Hitting dads are a menace, and that old black rubber noose hanging across the water was a reminder that some guys grow up to be meaner that their dads."
p. 33 - In fact I didn't know anything about cool shoes or jackets or motorcycles or tow trucks or fireworks or cigarettes or girlfriends who drive trucks or whiskey or gangs or stealing cars or secret clubhouses or love or prison or soul music or real cruelty or anything like that. But in an instant everything I did know seemed childish and I was suddenly in a rush to catch up to everything he knew and felt." (And there is the ENTIRE story - in only two sentences - and not 208 pages!)
p. 34 - "'Understanding is what you want from your girlfriend,' he sagely replied...'Control,' he said with contempt, 'is what your parents want from you. Tattoo that on your sailor beanie and sign it Gary Pagoda.'"
p. 35 - "'This is the day I realized that the unknown self deep within me is the self to pursue, and that the known self is the superficial self I have to burn all the way down to the ground without ever looking back.'"
p. 36 - "And who knows, maybe I wanted the trouble, too. I didn't see it coming, but the moment it showed up and said, 'Follow me' that is just what I did."
p. 39 - "Mom had a tender inner life, which I feared because instinctively I knew her kind heart had given birth to my own heart and I had her same softness within me, but I was a boy and not a mom and it seemed impossible, even wrong, that we could share the same emotional life. Still, we did, though tenderheartedness expressed itself differently through us."
p. 39 - "For me, sadness was a repulsive flaw I hid darkly within myself so I couldn't find it. I was ashamed of my sadness and knew it was a sign that I was not brave; instead I was a coward, and being a coward was the source of the whole world's scorn."
p. 93 - "I had always respected the strength of silence. Whenever I picked up a smooth river rock with my hand I held it to my ear. The silence within it was as vast as the universe. In time it would erode and slowly its drifting particles would fan through the atmosphere and silently cast their pinprick shadows onto the earth."
p. 97 - "If silence made me empty inside, then Gary's words would fill me."
p. 108 - "'It makes me think you don't understand our relationship. So let's make this clear once and for all. You' - and he drove his finger into my chest - 'get to be next to me. That's the gift I'm giving you in return. You got that?' 'Sure,' I said, breathing harder. 'Does that mean I get to end up being like you?' 'Don't be ridiculous,' he said as he lit a cigarette. 'Even if you could be me you don't want to be me. Heck, I don't even want to be me.'"
p. 151 - "...if i had a pet to love me I could love it back and nothing could come between us. Maybe that was the best relationship in the world and I wouldn't be staring out the window all day like a puppy looking for an owner."
p. 174 - "'With Gary I'm sort of the second-in-command,' I said proudly. 'The second-in-command is my favorite role,' she [his mom] said in a warm voice. 'It's like being a secret boss. The second-in-command can be a good influence and a clever leader by helping to point out the right path to the boss. Like me and your dad. He might be the boss because he's the man of the house, but I'm the leader. I'm the one that gives him good ideas and makes him think he thought of them.That was true. 'But is that good enough for you?' I asked. 'Yes,' she replied. 'Because I know I'm the real boss...'"
p. 176 - "...I was so two-faced I couldn't really be alone because each face took turns hating the other."
p. 178 - "I suppose all or us look at ourselves from time to time and wish we were bigger, stronger, meaner, tougher, and more vicious than the next guy. Being smart just isn't enough. I could be smart on my own at night alone in my room, but I wanted to be fearsome when I was out in the world walking bravely down dark streets or walking indifferently down those blindingly bright school hallways during class breaks. I wanted to be a man."
p. 192 - "'Congratulations,' he said bitterly. 'Instead of you stepping into my shoes, I've knocked you clean out of yours.' He was right in a way he didn't fully understand. But I did. The more true he had been to himself, the more false I had been to myself."
p. 193 - "...it's a lot easier to lose yourself inside the maze of someone's life you think is better than your own than it is to stand alone under the noonday sun and be your true self."
p. 204 - "I suppose if I really had become like Gary I'd have destroyed myself as he was doing, but I wasn't him. Nor was I his angelic opposite - a 'good' version of him. It was just me all along playing at being his imaginary friend."
This is such a sad, sad story. It is a testament to how writing can be our therapy and help us work through our issues - even those that are decades ole.
I question who the audience for this book is. It is marketed as a middle school read - the protagonist is about to enter eighth grade. However, the story is told to us by the adult Jack Gantos who has the benefit of time and perspective to enhance his understanding of this time in his life. The perspective is very adult and complex. I am not sure that most middle schoolers will have the patience and life experience to connect with this book.
January 22, 2018
This autobiographical novel named The Trouble In Me captures a pivotal week or two in the life of fourteen-year-old Jack Gantos, as the author reveals the moment he began to slide off track as a kid. Jack is an unpopular kid who is in middle school and has to move around the country often due to his father’s demanding job. Set in the Fort Lauderdale neighborhood of his family's latest rental home, The Trouble in Me opens with an encounter in which Jack first meets his older neighbor, Gary Pagoda, the troublemaker who hasn’t made it out of highschool. Conversation is spurred instantly, and Jack is inspired and decides he wants to be like Gary. As a follower, Jack is eager to leave his old self behind, and desperate for whatever crazy, hilarious, frightening thing might happen next. Gary realizes that Jack is vulnerable, so he uses him to look good in front of his parole officer. Jack isn’t smart enough to realize this, he just thinks he is meeting his first friend in this new town he’s never been to before. This obsession to be a troublemaker like Gary turns into something much more, and Jack thinks he is ready for what is coming for him. However, Jack may be in for things that he is not ready for, and the true trouble brought out by Gary in Jacks comes furiously to life. Read The Trouble In Me and find out how two partners in crime burn up the town in popularity...
August 13, 2020
The book chronicles Jack's life when Jack moves to Florida and becomes infatuated with Gary, the bad boy next door. Jack is so self-aware (decades of hindsight likely helps) that he realizes how he's just a follower, the type of kid who can't be his true self, so he'd rather be someone else. But Gary does dangerous stuff. He's beyond mischievous; he's a criminal.
This book was definitely *not* another in the Norvelt series. While Gantos' Norvelt books are without-a-doubt middle grade, The Trouble in Me is a big jump towards young adult--in fact, I think it has a few toes in YA. That said, I think it was mostly appropriate to read it to my son. We talked about what true friendship is and how Gary and Jack don't have a good friendship. We talked about the importance of "keeping your brain on" when friends want you to do things you know aren't right. So...hopefully he won't light a trailer on fire like Gary does. Fingers crossed...!
This book was definitely *not* another in the Norvelt series. While Gantos' Norvelt books are without-a-doubt middle grade, The Trouble in Me is a big jump towards young adult--in fact, I think it has a few toes in YA. That said, I think it was mostly appropriate to read it to my son. We talked about what true friendship is and how Gary and Jack don't have a good friendship. We talked about the importance of "keeping your brain on" when friends want you to do things you know aren't right. So...hopefully he won't light a trailer on fire like Gary does. Fingers crossed...!
April 22, 2022
I started off shook because I did not realize the book was based on a true story, and on involving the author at that! I feel it kind of took forever to get a point across at first. I felt like everything was a rambling speech. About halfway through the book I got the feeling and the concurrence that Jack was not just simply wanting to be like Gary, but had developed an almost obsessive like attitude to become Gary. The probation officer was not what I expected. I was taken back by his attitude and lack of professionalism during my reading encounter with him. One thing I didn't like was how an entire side story seemed to start near the end of the book. I was wanting to know more but at the same time annoyed that it started in the first place. All in all the book was alright, but I feel it was a gateway to attempt to get readers to read another book, which was clever don't get me wrong. I just feel this story was a compilation of side stories bunched together.
May 28, 2017
Jack Gantos would be the first to admit he did some pretty messed up stuff in his younger years. In this memoir he identifies the summer that proved to be a turning point in his life -- a turn for the worse. Gantos writes beautifully lyrical passages, even when he is talking about things that are completely disgusting or hilarious or awful, and I enjoyed his narration of the audiobook. I felt somewhat bogged down in the introspective passages pauses in the narrative, however. There was a point about 20 minutes from the end of the audiobook when it seemed that something horrifying and unforgivable was going to happen. I ended up switching over to print so I could skim through and make sure it was safe to go forward. Vague spoiler warning: it was safe. I would be interested to read Hole in My Life, but I don't think anything's going to top Joey Pigza for me.
May 10, 2018
This is a great book it was easy to read and understand what you where reading about. I think that the genre humor, fits the book stile very good because in some parts it is kinda funny. I also like reading about people and what bad things they did in the past like good or bad things. But like in this book he is not so good and I don't know why i like the book so much. About the genre humor, In most of the book is kinda serious but than there is some humor in there like little bits. The book gets you to keep reading it and it keeps coming up with interesting stuff you cant really set the book down. I also that maybe the genre is fiction because the stuff in the book can really happen is real life.
December 14, 2017
The perfect read for those tweens trying to decide to be like the worst influence in the world. I remember when I gave my grandson A Hole in My Life. He wanted to be just like Jack. He has wisely decided that isn't the path he wants to take, thankfully. We need to help our kids know who they are, provide a loving environment for them to know they are always loved, even when they mess up, and a safe haven to come home to when times everywhere else in the world is too rough.
Jack needed more support from his dad and mom. The love just wasn't felt. These are only my opinions, but I know when a kid is loved and when a kid is seeking attention. Jack is seeking the wrong kind of attention with dismal after effects.
Good read.
Jack needed more support from his dad and mom. The love just wasn't felt. These are only my opinions, but I know when a kid is loved and when a kid is seeking attention. Jack is seeking the wrong kind of attention with dismal after effects.
Good read.
March 2, 2018
The Trouble in Me by Jack Gantos was a thought provoking read. The book included the theme identity. Throughout the book the main character, Jack, struggles with his identity. I found this topic something that many teenagers could relate to while reading. A boy moves in to him next door and begins to influence Jack. The author relates his youth and struggle to find his identity to how he ended up in Juvie later. The book deals with heavy themes, but I believe it is a very important book for teens to read. I liked this book because of how relatable it was to teenagers and how it intertwined heavy themes with Jack’s story. I recommend this to teens looking for a book that will make them think.
February 9, 2018
Jack Gantos, a Juvenile author and illustrator of the Rec Cat book, children's book author and Young Adult author...I would say that this one is definitely for the older Young Adult child. In this day and age I would say that this book should not be available in the children's section....More appropriate for the Young Adult audience...At almost 60, I must say that I felt a little uncomfortable with the talk about playing with fire...and the "Olympic Games" the Gary would use as a tool to punish Jack was also uncomfortable...
Laura Cobrinik,
Boonton Township, NJ
Laura Cobrinik,
Boonton Township, NJ
May 20, 2019
Darkly humorous, there are some truly sad moments when Jack reveals his loneliness and feelings of self-hatred, as well as horrifying and disturbing moments when the kids play Jackass type games that can really harm someone. I love Gantos' writing, but some parts were definitely overwritten, as he tries to carry the fire theme across the entire novel. I do wonder how much of this is really made up, as most of it does seem true and these characters and types of stories can be found in his other works.
January 15, 2017
This book was so good! The beginning was a little odd to me, but as I got into it, I couldn't stop reading. Jack had such a good character that I loved to read about. I really did enjoy this book very much. If I had to say anything remotely bad about it, it would be about the final scene with the dog. I found the detail of what they did to the poor dog very disturbing and somewhat disgusting. Anyway, I would definitely give this book a read.
February 20, 2018
As a fictionalized memoir, it's hard to tell what really happened and what are embellishments from a talented storyteller. At age 14, Jack met Gary Pagoda, a troubled teen who fascinated Jack and who he wanted to emulate. The rest of the book reads like watching Mtv's Jackass show, with the boys doing a lot of stupid and supremely dangerous stunts. This will probably be popular among boys of a similar ilk, but most of them tens not to be big readers--at least the book is short.
August 12, 2018
Although Jack Gantos is a great writer (especially for boys) and I have his books in my library, this one was kind of hard to read. It's autobiographical from when he was a young teenager and he just does the craziest, destructive things and hates himself so much. I felt so bad for his poor mom! His father was verbally abusive and he gets into all sorts of trouble with an older next door neighbor who is out of juvenile detention. I think there's a sequel to this book.
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