Hole In My Life by Jack Gantos. Published in 2002 by the Douglass & McIntyre Ltd.
Book Summary:
Jack Gantos starts the book off explaining why the cover page is his mug shot. In the beginning he shows a small chunk of ignorance towards life, saying something along the lines of "trouble being possible to avoid forever," which is actually inevitable in reality. Drugs are a motif within the story; it either helps the protagonists gain popularity or gives him a rough time. Further into the book, Jack goes to St. Croix of the Key West to seek his purpose in life. He flees the area shortly after arriving, since tension rose between separate races. Things were not good at the moment; since cash was hard to come by, Jack resorted to selling hash with some strangers he recently met.
The feds had tailed the group from the beginning of their scandal. A former alias gave them off, to reduce his sentence after being with drugs. During the journey, Jack had accounted all the events that occurred when he was selling dope into a journal. Within his trial, the journal was mysteriously brought up as evidence that wold guarantee jail time. Sent straight to jail, he lived in constant fear of anyone that lurked around the corner. Looking for ways to escape jail, a golden opportunity arose; Jack had applied for college from within jail and received an early dismissal from the parole board since he met the requirements. Hitting "rock bottom" a few times never hindered the main character from bouncing back onto his two bare feet, which eventually lead to his earned freedom.
Quote:
"All I had to do was have fun and be back by midnight. Cinderella rules" (Gantos 190).
Quote Explanation:
Jack is contained within a jail cell and in desperate need of escaping early at any almost any cost. The parole board allows behaved jail inhabitants to stroll around the outskirts of jail as long as you return by after dawn. The author tries to build a connection with the reader by seeing if we know a well-known fairy tale. Cinderella's life is a ironic simile to Jack's, if you look through a symbolic perspective. The tower in which Cinderella's locked in is similar to jail for Jack, and his "knight in shining armor" is the opportunity to go to college. He's trapped within his "tower" which is guarded by a dragon that could represent the lawyer(s) and evidence against him.
