Pay It Forward: A Novel
and over 360,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle – Amazon’s new wireless reading device.
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Special Offers and Product Promotions
- This item is eligible for our 4-for-3 promotion. Eligible products include select Books, Single Copy Magazines, and Home & Garden items. Buy any 4 eligible items and get the lowest-priced item free. Here's how (restrictions apply)
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
by The Editors of Conari Press
|
by Meladee McCarty
|
by Catherine Ryan Hyde
|
by The Editors of Conari Press
|
by Conari Press
|
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Catherine Ryan Hyde's Pay It Forward takes as its premise the bumper-sticker phrase "Think Globally, Act Locally" and builds a novel around it. The hero of her story is young Trevor McKinney, a 12-year-old whose imagination is sparked by an extra-credit assignment in Social Studies: "Think of an idea for world change, and put it into action." Trevor's idea is deceptively simple: do a good deed for three people, and in exchange, ask each of them to "pay it forward" to three more. "So nine people get helped. Then those people have to do twenty-seven.... Then it sort of spreads out." Trevor's early attempts to get his project off the ground seem to end in failure: a junkie he befriends ends up back in jail; an elderly woman whose garden he tends dies unexpectedly. But even after the boy has given up on his plan, his acts of kindness bear unexpected fruit, and soon an entire movement is underway and spreading across America.
Trevor, meanwhile, could use a little help himself. His father walked out on the family, and his mother, Arlene, is fighting an uphill battle with alcoholism, poor judgment in men, and despair. When the boy's new Social Studies teacher, Reuben St. Clair, arrives on the scene, Trevor sees in him not only a source of inspiration for how to change the world, but also the means of altering his mother's life. Yet Reuben has his own set of problems. Horribly scarred in Vietnam, he is reluctant to open himself up to the possibility of rejection--or love. Indeed, the relationship between Arlene and Reuben is central to the novel as these two damaged people learn to "pay forward" the trust and affection Trevor has given them.
Hyde tells her tale from many different perspectives, using letters, diary entries, and first- and third-person narratives from the various people whose lives Trevor's project touches. Jerry Busconi, for example, the addict Trevor tried to help, one night finds himself talking a young woman out of jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge:
I'm a junkie, Charlotte. I'm always gonna be a junkie. I ain't never gonna be no fine, upstanding citizen. But then I thought, hell. Just pay it forward anyway. Kid tried to help me. Okay, it didn't work. Still, I'm trying to help you. Maybe you'll jump. I don't know. But I tried, right? But let me tell you one thing. I woke up one morning and somebody gave me a chance. Just outta nowhere. It was like a miracle. Now, how do you know that won't happen to you tomorrow?Pay It Forward is reminiscent of Frank Capra's classic It's a Wonderful Life. Like the film, this novel has a steely core of gritty reality beneath its optimism: yes, one person can make a difference, can help to make the world a better place, but sickness, pain, heartache, and tragedy will still always be a part of the human condition. If at times Hyde stumbles a bit while negotiating the razor-thin line between honest feeling and sentimentality, it's generally not for long. And the occasional lapse into artificially colored emotion can be forgiven when weighed against the courage it takes to write so unabashedly hopeful a story in such cynical times. --Sheila Bright --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
An ordinary boy engineers a secular miracle in Hyde's (Funerals for Horses) winning second novel, set in small-town 1990s California. Twelve-year-old Trevor McKinney, the son of Arlene, a single mom working two jobs, and Ricky, a deadbeat absentee dad, does not seem well-positioned to revolutionize the world. But when Trevor's social studies teacher, Reuben St. Clair, gives the class an extra-credit assignment, challenging his students to design a plan to change society, Trevor decides to start a goodwill chain. To begin, he helps out three people, telling each of them that instead of paying him back, they must "pay it forward" by helping three others. At first, nothing seems to work out as planned, not even Trevor's attempt to bring Arlene and Reuben together. Granted, Trevor's mother and his teacher are an unlikely couple: she is a small, white, attractive, determined but insecure recovering alcoholic; he is an educated black man who lost half his face in Vietnam. But eventually romance does blossom, and unbeknownst to Trevor, his other attempts to help do "pay forward," yielding a chain reaction of newsworthy proportions. Reporter Chris Chandler is the first to chase down the story, and Hyde's narrative is punctuated with excerpts from histories Chandler publishes in later years (Those Who Knew Trevor Speak and The Other Faces Behind the Movement), as well as entries from Trevor's journal. Trevor's ultimate martyrdom, and the extraordinary worldwide success of his project, catapult the drama into the realm of myth, but Hyde's simple prose rarely turns preachy. Her Capraesque themeAthat one person can make a differenceAmay be sentimental, but for once, that's a virtue. $250,000 ad/promo; BOMC and QPB alternates; 7-city author tour; film rights optioned by Warner Bros. (Feb.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
› Visit Amazon's Catherine Ryan Hyde Page
› Visit Amazon's Catherine Ryan Hyde Page
Inside This Book
(learn more)
First Sentence:
The woman smiled so politely that he felt offended. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Catherine Ryan Hyde, Mary Anne, Chris Chandler, Paying Forward, White House, Miss Liza, Deion Sanders, Citizen of the Month, Ida Greenberg, Jerry Busconi, Laser Lounge, President Clinton, City Hall, Dodge Dart, New York, San Francisco, Sidney Gerard, Tracking the Movement New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
The woman smiled so politely that he felt offended. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Catherine Ryan Hyde, Mary Anne, Chris Chandler, Paying Forward, White House, Miss Liza, Deion Sanders, Citizen of the Month, Ida Greenberg, Jerry Busconi, Laser Lounge, President Clinton, City Hall, Dodge Dart, New York, San Francisco, Sidney Gerard, Tracking the Movement New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 3
books:
34
books
cite this book:
See all 34 books citing this book
- Funerals for Horses (Emerging Writers) by Catherine Ryan Hyde in Front Matter (1), and Front Matter (2)
- Earthquake Weather by Catherine Ryan Hyde in Front Matter
- It's a Wonderful Life by James W. Rodgers in Front Matter
- Movie-Based Illustrations for Preaching and Teaching - Volume 1 by Craig Brian Larson on page 103, and page 121
- Moments of Truth: A Spirituality of Time, Grace and Sacred Space by Joe Nassal on page 149
- 180 Ways to Spread Contagious Enthusiasm... The "How To" Handook for Everyone by Barbara A. Glanz on page 36
- Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essential Virtues that Teach Kids to Do the Right Thing by Michele Borba Ed.D. in Back Matter
- The Complete Guide to Service Learning: Proven, Practical Ways to Engage Students in Civic Responsibility, Academic Curriculum, & Social Action by Cathryn Berger Kaye on page 202
See all 34 books citing this book
What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?
 |
83% buy the item featured on this page: Pay It Forward $7.99 |
 |
3% buy Random Acts of Kindness $9.32 |
 |
2% buy Acts of Kindness: How to Create a Kindness Revolution $10.00 |
 |
1% buy More Random Acts of Kindness $10.16 |
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Listmania!
|
|
So You'd Like to...
Product Information from the Amapedia Community
Beta (What's this?)Be the first person to add an article about this item at Amapedia.com.
› See featured Amapedia.com articles
Look for Similar Items by Category
Look for Similar Items by Subject
Your Recent History
(What's this?)|
After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. |
