Hole in my Life by Jack Gantos

Hi,
     My name is Raj Patel and over my summer holidays I read a novel called Hole In My Life by Jack Gantos.
The novel was extremely tense and quite violent at the same time too.

Hole in My Life is based around Gantos's learnings when he tried to smuggle hashish from Florida to New York for money to got to university to become a writer. Along the way he encounters love, friendship and practical knowledge which ultimately helps him to get out of jail quicker than he would have thought. As boring as it seems, this book has inspired me of all people to do something great in my life. I feel as if this novel has enlightened me into reaching my goal of life.

In the beginning of the book, Gantos comes about as quite a boisterous teenager but as the story develops, you get to know that thoughts can be deceiving. As a young man he understands that he needs to do something with his life in order to help out his family.

Living in Cuba, drugs was part of his culture so he took the opportunity to smuggle some drugs into New York of a smuggling ring of gangsters, after all, who wouldn't for a $100,000 reward?  As himself and his captain set sail, Cuba becomes a war zone, a war between the government and the gangsters, Gantos's family home gets ripped to shreds and his brothers and sisters are scared that they might not see a tomorrow again. Yet he ploughed on with his journey.

Along the way the two shipmates stop over to have a cup of tea when their ship was about to effectively get towed away from the waters as they had crossed Mexican and American waters. They carried on with their journey.

Finally in New York with drugs of an estimated $500,000 street value, the two split up, the captain went to find the buyer and Gantos went to rent out a room in a motel. The captain had been lucky as the police had caught Gantos ..........

I'll let you do the rest of the reading!