Hole in My Life

Bibliography

Gantos, Jack. Hole in My Life. 2002. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 978-0-374-43089-4

Critical Analysis

Jack Gantos holds nothing back as he depicts his haphazard, young adult mistakes that land him in prison in his early twenties in his memoir Hole in My Life. Gantos' passion for writing and literature is woven in with every adventure he relates. As he grasps for something to write about he realizes that his "biggest problem with writing was that [he] didn't have anything worthwhile to write about" because nothing exciting ever happened to him. His wish for something adventurous to write about certainly came true when he gets himself into a drug smuggling partnership and sails from St. Croix to New York with hundreds of pounds of hash and a strange British sailing partner named Hamilton who prefers to walk around the boat naked. Inevitably they get caught and Gantos lands himself in prison for fifteen months. With these facts in hand, the reader's first instinct is to assume that Gantos is just another underprivileged, uneducated teen who fell in with a bad crowd, but Gantos' counteracts these assumptions with a heavy dose of literary name dropping. He goes on a trip to see the homes of Hemingway and Stephen Crane. He reads poetry, classic literature and takes photos of the doors of writer's rooms at the hotel Chelsea. He defies the stereotype of a pot-smoking drug-seller purely with his knowledge and love of literature.

Despite Gantos' frustrating decisions that get him into more trouble than he can handle, readers will find themselves on his side, hoping he doesn't get caught and put in prison for selling hash. This controversial approach is finally counterbalanced when the wife of a former buyer asks him "did you ever consider what it could do to the people who bought it?" This is the first and arguably the only time the reader sees Gantos think beyond himself and his desire to write. He says he "was beginning to feel how I had screwed up more lives than just my own." Even though the reader is rooting for Gantos, it is a relief to see him finally look past himself, even for just a fleeting moment. 

Young adults will love to read Hole in My Life if only for the seemingly off-limits topics approached in the memoir. The theme of the entire memoir is based around the selling and using of drugs and the prison references can be rather graphic and sexual making this book appropriate for mature young adults grades 10 and up.

Book Group Ideas

In his memoir Hole in My Life Jack Gantos mentions several writing exercises to spur his creative writing. Write any and everything that comes to your mind about the memoir for five minutes. Discuss some of the thoughts with the book group and any other ideas that may pop into your mind as you discuss.

External Assessment

"The compelling story of the author's final year in high school, his brushes with crime, and his subsequent incarceration. Gantos has written much about his early years with his eccentric family, and this more serious book picks up the tale as they moved to Puerto Rico during his junior year. He returned to Florida alone, living in a seedy motel while he finished high school and realized that his options for college weren't great. A failed drug deal cost him most of his savings and he joined his family, now in St. Croix, where he accepted an offer of $10,000 to help sail a boat full of hash to New York. He and his colleagues were caught, and as it turns out, he was in more trouble than he anticipated. Sent to federal prison for up to six years, Gantos landed a job in the hospital section, a post that protected him from his fellow inmates, yet allowed him to witness prison culture firsthand. Much of the action in this memoir-some of it quite raw and harsh-will be riveting to teen readers. However, the book's real strength lies in the window it gives into the mind of an adolescent without strong family support and living in the easy drug culture of the 1970s. Gantos looks for role models and guidance in the pages of the books he is reading, and his drive to be a writer and desire to go to college ultimately save him."-
Barbara Scotto, School Library Journal

Awards: American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults; American Library Association Notable Children's Books; American Library Association Popular Paperbacks for Young Readers; Michael L. Printz Award - Honor; Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year; Books for the Teen Age, New York Public Library; Parents' Choice Award Winner; Booklist Editors' Choice; Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books Blue Ribbon Award; Horn Book Magazine Fanfare List; School Library Journal Best Books of the Year; Robert F. Sibert Award - Honor; Massachusetts Children's Book Award