Some of you may have already seen the theatrical version of this book (Pay It Forward
The premise of this book is that Trevor McKinney, a young boy from a small town, has a teacher named Reuben St. Clair who gives the class an assignment. “What I want is for the students to re-examine their role in the world and think of ways one person can make a difference. It’s a very healthy exercise.” (47) The novel is separated into chapters dedicated to a particular character – the majority of the time it’s either Arlene, Trevor’s mother, or Reuben, his teacher.
A“A seemingly ordinary twelve-year-old boy could change the world completely – for the better, and forever – working with nothing but his own altruism, one good idea, and a couple of years. And a big sacrifice. The most important thing I can add for my own observations is this: knowing it started from unremarkable circumstances should be a comfort to us all. Because it proves that you don’t need much to change the entire world for the better. You can start with the most ordinary ingredients. You can start with the world you’ve got.” (7-10)
At first, the book was a bit hard to understand and the writing seemed very colloquial, which can often be a good thing, if it’s done right, since it makes you feel like you’re having a conversation with someone. In this particular instance, it felt very juvenile & simplistic, yet hard to understand. It was almost written in a stream of consciousness at some points, trying to make it relatable, but it missed the mark. It’s also hard to immediately just drops you into the scene with no context and expected you to understand all of the characters before they were really introduced.
A quarter of the way into the book, I did start to get into and really started to enjoy it. This little boy seems pretty inspired to make his dream of Pay it Forward come true, even when he’s met with adverse outcomes. His plan is to impact three people’s lives and then have them “Pay it Forward.” This means that they will not pay him, but rather do something good for three more people, without expecting anything in return.
Summary & My Thoughts: Spoilers Alert
Of course, you can’t have positive outcomes without complications. The first person that Trevor chooses for his first Pay it Forward act of kindness is a man named Jerry who has been down on his luck with drugs and an inability to find a job. Trevor helps him back on his feet and he is able to find work and get his first paycheck. When he does, though, he goes right back down the rabbit hole and spends all his money on beer, playing pool, and drugs. And….also ends up in jail.
When Trevor tries to visit him, he refuses to see him. This pisses his mother off quite extensively, but Trevor is more concerned about his well-being.
His second Pay it Forward choice was a very sweet old lady named Mrs. Greenberg. He revitalizes her garden to her amazement, since her late husband had been the one to tend it for her. However, shortly after he completed her garden, “her chest first began to hurt on the way home. Not her heart, but more her lungs, like a bad congestion, and she stopped often to catch her breath.” My first thought was oh no! I hope she doesn’t have the Corona virus, as if this was around at the time of this story. Then she says, “even if the thing that latched on to her next was a bad one – pneumonia, or the Asian flu…” (74-75) What in the world…?! It’s like…foreshadowing!
But….it was only foreshadowing that she died that evening. Trevor is disappointed – not that she died – but rather because he wanted her to continue the Pay it Forward deal. “I didn’t just want a good grade. I really wanted the world to get better.” (89)
What surprised me, fortunately, is that Mrs. Greenberg did follow through on her end of the deal. She actually had chosen three people to give her life insurance money to, one of whom was a boy named Matt who worked in the grocery store. He desperately needed the money, since he was trying to leave a broken home. She said in her letter to him, “if do you want to know why I chose you, it’s because you always had a nice smile, and you asked how I was feeling. And then you listened to the answer. You never made me feel like I didn’t matter, or like I wasn’t there.” (109)
The other two people she chose was a woman in worked in a veterinarian’s office and another grocery clerk, but we don’t hear about these people’s stories.
As the story continues, each chapter touches on a particular person’s life and how it’s been affected through the Pay it Forward challenge. One story in particular really got to me, as it involves a young man experimenting with make up and changing his look into a woman. He tries to meet someone one night, but they never show. Three men end up jumping him when they see that he has make up on his face, without him even bothering them. After he arrives home, with a battered and bloodied face, his mother immediately runs to his rescue. His stepfather on the other hand, back hands him and screams about what’s on his face.
The worst part…is the way his mother responds. “He’s not a bad man, honey. It just makes him mad. If you could just wash your face before you come home. Maybe change your clothes. Just don’t rub his nose in it, you know?” Face palm. How incredibly degrading to tell your own son that he has to be different from who he is because it BOTHERS someone else.
The story not only made my blood boil (LGBTQ rights activist and all), it also brought back memories and stories of those men who batter women and the women who feel like they have no control over it or feel like they can’t speak up. I’ve been in this situation, more than once with different men, and I’ve given them more power than I should have. I made excuses for their behavior and acted like it was OK to be treated like that. What saddens me is the amount of women who go through the same thing and believe that they have to put up with it for fear of being alone or because they believe they aren’t worthy enough to have a good man.
As the story continues to unfold, it focuses on the “love story” of Trevor’s mom, Arlene and Reuben. Even though they both want each other and feel the need to be with each other, mistakes are made by Arlene and he won’t take her back. He doesn’t explain why he doesn’t. His thoughts focus on how to avoid her and her consistency in trying to win him back. She wants him badly and practically begs for him to take her back, but he won’t. She made a big mistake in taking back the man who was Trevor’s father, even though he’s a complete and utter dipshit.
What’s really unfortunate is that we don’t get the grand scheme of the whole Paying it Forward movement. I expected to see the impact of lives that were changed – not just the handful of people who were affected. Instead we get a small spattering of some examples, none of which are in-depth, which makes it seem like random stories thrown into a bigger story. I was hoping for a lot more description and a lot more lives to truly be touched.
However – the book thinks that what he did was pretty epic because Trevor and his family is invited to Washington, DC to meet the president, Mr. Bill Clinton. During this trip, Reuben realizes that he does want to be with Arlene for the rest of his life and gives her back the engagement ring. FINALLY – it was rather exhausting to hear the constant back and forth between the two.
When they do finally meet the president, the text doesn’t mention the exact words, but rather snippets of what the president was saying. I felt this was a faux pas for the novel, as this is an important moment in all of their lives. As I have mentioned previously, this book has done that quite often – glossed over important parts and trudged on with things I didn’t care to read about.
Trevor, on the other hand, knows how important this day is and what it really means..for him, and for the world. “This has been the best, most incredible day. Do you think they’ll ever be a day this good again, Reuben? Or do you just get one of these? I mean, my birthday tomorrow, and meeting the president, and you and mom getting married. Do you think I’ll ever have another day like this one?…This means I only got one more to do. One more person to help.” (255)
Unfortunately, it was the best day of his life, because the next person he helped, that very afternoon, caused him to get stabbed…and die. It seems a bit harsh to state it so matter-of-factly, but the author did the same thing. I am usually a pretty emotional person (see previous review of Walk Two Moons), and I didn’t even get teary eyed at that point.
Roughly 20,000 people showed up for his memorial in their small town. This just goes to show that one person can truly make a difference in the world.
Reuben speaks to the crowd:
“What made you all care so much? Why is it such a big story? I think I know. I think you know, too. This is our world. Where is the person who can’t relate to that? This is our world. It’s the only one we’ve got. It’s gotten so damn hard to live in. And we care. How can we not care? These are our lives we’re talking about. And then a little boy came along, and he decided maybe he could change the whole thing. The whole world order. Make it a decent place to live for everybody. Maybe because he was too young and optimistic and inexperienced to know it couldn’t be done. And it looked for a minute like it could work. So, just for a minute, all these people who care enough to be here or to watch this, just for a minute you thought the world might really change… If Trevor touched your life that much, then maybe you need to pay that forward… every month or two, some miraculous act of kindness for everybody. It just keeps getting bigger. Before you could even pay it forward, someone would pay it forward to you again. We all lose track after a while. We’d all be scrambling around trying to find people to do good for.” (278-280)
And with that, the novel is over. Well, it does end with Arlene and Reuben having a baby and Reuben giving Ricky (the dead beat ex), some money to get back on his feet, but I didn’t feel that was TOO important at this point.
All in all, if you like feel good stories, maybe this is a good one to get into. Otherwise, I was pretty bored for most of it and it took me a little while to get into.
Rating: 2.5/5.