Redheaded Reviews: Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Arlene McKinney is a recovering alcoholic who works two jobs to make ends meet and to pay off a broken down truck that she co-signed with her boyfriend who disappeared and may be dead, but who likely isn't coming back. She has a thirteen-year-old son, Trevor by him. Trevor is a good kid who has a new social studies teacher at his school named Reuben St. Clair who was scarred physically by the Vietnam war and wears an eyepatch.

Reuben starts off his class every year in the new towns he seems to keep moving to with an extra credit assignment for those who choose to do it: Think of an idea for world change and put it into action. Trevor gets an idea of what to do and sets about doing it. He takes his earnings from his paper route and places an ad in the paper that he will be giving it away to someone at a certain address on a certain day. About forty people show up and he becomes concerned because he only wants to help one person, but a large group leaves when they see that it's only a kid. So he decides to have them write an essay to determine why they should get it. A few more leave because they can't write. He picks out a homeless junkie named Jerry to help. He buys him some new clothes and lets him take a shower in his home much to his mother's consternation. Jerry is able to get a job working on cars and he helps Arlene by taking apart the truck to save her money as she is selling it for parts and it cuts into what she can get if the guy has to remove it himself. All that Trevor asks is that Jerry does three things for three other people and have them do three things for three other people. He calls it the Pay It Forward system. But Jerry will let him down by going back to jail.

The other person Trevor helps is Mrs. Greenberg, an elderly woman on his paper route. He takes care of her lawn and flowers. He tells her about the Pay It Forward System. But Trevor hears that she dies and believes that she never had time to pay it forward. He does keep up her lawn and takes care of the stray cats that Mrs. Greenberg took care of just in case she is looking down from Heaven.

The third person on his list to help is Reuben. He believes that Reuben and his mom should be together and that they would be happy. But he feels he is doomed to fail on this front as well as the two keep acting defensively toward each other. She believes that he looks down on her for her lack of education and he believes that she looks down on him for his hideous appearance. They're both wrong, of course. But that will not be the only obstacle to them getting together. One bigger than the two can imagine will come between them.

This was a really good book. It was very well written with an idea that at the time of its publication seemed revolutionary. It's a shame it didn't take hold. Some people might have trouble with the different narrators as it can be confusing, though it wasn't to me. I would like to take a moment here to point out that in the book Reuben is an African American and in the movie he is portrayed by Kevin Spacey, a fine actor who happens to be white. That is a shame. I also understand that the mioie really departs from the book for those who have seen it. I do recommend this book.

Quotes

I no longer think I lack a judgment about men. I will never again say my instincts are poor, no sir, because how do I keep finding the same guy over and over? I am beginning to think I have a very keen sense of judgment, only it would seem that it is on somebody else’s side.

-Catherine Ryan Hyde (Pay It Forward p 19)

Arlene started to say something back by couldn’t think what it should be and worried it would be a bad, weak-sounding something no matter how carefully she thought it up. So instead she poured two fingers of good old Jose Cuervo. The one man in her life who never told her lies, so you always knew what you would get. And you could never say you didn’t know.

-Catherine Ryan Hyde (Pay It Forward p 23)

There was something clean and victorious about waking up feeling that bad. It meant he was alive still. That’s he’d survived again.

-Catherine Ryan Hyde (Pay It Forward p 159)

Much to Gordie’s surprise and relief, he found the ability to detach had not abandoned him. It would be another beating like so many before. He would watch it from a distance, and his skin and bones would heal. Or maybe this time not. But he would be elsewhere as it happened, shut down. When you don’t care anymore you deprive them of the joy of hurting you. Hard to hit somebody where they live if there’s nobody home.

-Catherine Ryan Hyde (Pay It Forward p 280)