As a writer, I’ve always been drawn to exploring the teenage experience. Maybe that’s because my experiences in high school and college were rife with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows—everything was intensely beautiful and painful at once. That tension played a major role in my self-discovery process, and story-wise, it makes for a compelling character. But in a lot of literature, I find the depiction of teenage characters to be either sensationalized or infantilizing, melodramatic, or unconvincingly flat. When writing my own adolescent subjects in The Wayside, I turned often toward the rich, complex characters in the stories here.
It’s not often that a thirty-something man nails the depiction of the interior life of a seventeen-year-old girl, but Jesse Ball did exactly that in his 2016 novel. Scrappy, arson-obsessed Lucia Stanton just might be my favorite literary teenage hero of all time. I think of her as a mix between Holden Caulfield’s charming disaffection and Juno’s precocious wit.
Ball imbues Lucia’s voice with intelligence and a hint of world-weariness, but he still manages to convey her innocence. You learn a lot from her, but you also want to protect her. My copy is dog-eared and underlined into oblivion. It’s one of those books I think is woefully underrated, and I recommend it any chance I get.
“Ball has created a voice that echoes the beloved narrators of J. D. Salinger and John Green. . . . With her tragic past, brilliant mind and subversive potential, Lucia could be thought of as a young Lisbeth Salander, or a high-IQ, antiheroic Katniss Everdeen, but with a better sense of humor.” —Newsday
Lucia Stanton’s father is dead, her mother is in a mental hospital, and she’s recently been kicked out of school—again. Living with her aunt in a garage-turned-bedroom, and armed with only a book, a Zippo lighter, and a pocketful of stolen licorice, she spends her days riding…
I originally read Thayer Hamann when I was in high school and identified so deeply with Evie, the protagonist, and also saw in her the person I yearned to become. Evie shares the intricacies of the teenage girl experience, beginning with her high school career in East Hampton and spanning through her undergraduate years at NYU.
Her perspective is graceful, smart, and deeply feeling, with her heart fully exposed on her sleeve—much in the way mine was as a teenager (and still is, in many ways). There’s an epic love story at the heart of the novel, as well (even though I wrote a thriller, I am a romantic to my core), and I’m not too proud to say that the love interest, Roarke, continues to be one of my favorite “book boyfriends.” I reread this every couple of years and can confirm it stands the test of time.
This is what it’s like to be a high-school-age girl. To forsake the boyfriend you once adored. To meet the love of your life, who just happens to be your teacher. To discover for the first time the power of your body and mind.
This is what it’s like to be a college-age woman. To live through heartbreak. To suffer the consequences of your choices. To depend on others for survival but to have no one to trust but yourself.
This is Anthropology of an American Girl. A literary sensation, this extraordinarily candid novel about the experience of growing up…
Along with Anthropology of an American Girl, this is one of the books that made me want to become a writer. More specifically, it opened my eyes to what a writer can do with a teenage subject.
The story follows a prep-school student, Lee, but Sittenfeld handles her experience with all the nuance of “adult” subjects. I also admire how Sittenfeld captures the labyrinthine social politics of an elite boarding school and comments on class and race hierarchies without ever feeling didactic.
I think people mistake this book as YA—I certainly did when I first picked it up as a thirteen-year-old—but don’t be fooled by that candy-colored ribbon belt on the cover. This is as complex a novel as they come.
An insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.
Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school’s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.…
I can’t talk about notable adolescent protagonists without mentioning Blue van Meer. Marisha Pessl’s cult-favorite debut made an impact on me as a teenage reader, but I recently picked it back up on a whim and was just as enthralled as an adult.
This is a formally inventive novel interspersed with hand-drawn illustrations and pop quizzes. It also defies generic categorization, weaving in elements of murder mystery, campus novel, and coming-of-age saga. It’s a lot to take in (and it clocks in at a door-stopping 540 pages), but Blue’s always-surprising observations keep the pages turning.
The mesmerizing New York Times bestseller by the author of Night Film
Marisha Pessl’s dazzling debut sparked raves from critics and heralded the arrival of a vibrant new voice in American fiction. At the center of Special Topics in Calamity Physics is clever, deadpan Blue van Meer, who has a head full of literary, philosophical, scientific, and cinematic knowledge. But she could use some friends. Upon entering the elite St. Gallway School, she finds some—a clique of eccentrics known as the Bluebloods. One drowning and one hanging later, Blue finds herself puzzling out a byzantine murder mystery. Nabokov meets Donna…
I wholeheartedly recommend this entire short story collection, but the title story, which centers on a recent high school grad, is a standout. While her architect father gallivants around Spain, Sara is left alone in his cold, modernist home on the coast of County Cork and battles her compulsion to self-harm.
This is a delicate subject matter, but it’s another example of an adult man inhabiting the mind of a teenage girl with a surprising facility. Kevin Barry is hands-down one of the best contemporary writers working today—no one uses language quite so inventively. Not for nothing, he’s one of the funniest writers, too, and his humor works to temper the melodrama that might arise in the hands of another writer.
Kevin Barry's deliciously wicked collection Dark Lies the Island delivers on the many reckless promises made by his virtuosic and prizewinning debut novel, City of Bohane. It firmly establishes him as both a world-class word slinger and a masterful storyteller.
When Kate Cleary’s son, Jake, dies at his elite liberal arts college, she refuses to believe it was suicide. Something sinister is at play, and Kate becomes determined to retrace Jake’s steps during his final days. Descending into a spiral of obsession as she finds herself up against unknown forces at every turn, Kate falls further into a dangerous mystery that brings her closer to a terrifying truth even Jake himself wanted to keep hidden.
Combining elements of dark academia and domestic fiction with a modern twist, This book is a sharply observed story of suspense, devotion, and the secrets we keep from those who love us most.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
