I’ve written some dozen books. After publishing the first 10, I realized I love to write about young people just finding out who they are and what’s important to them. I love to look back at that impressionable age and watch it unfold. So my last two books were YA—one set at a Quaker prep school and the other set in a dystopian city-state where teenage boys could be killed when they turn eighteen, and teenage girls could be used for sexual exploitation and discarded as easily as old milk cartons. Those troubled, tumultuous, anything-can-happen hovering adulthood years from about fifteen to twenty-one fascinate me and inspire my writing.
This book was part of my own coming of age. The prep school setting mirrored the struggles I saw, and I could feel the loneliness of those years and the peer pressure I experienced. Looking back now, I still think it’s a book worth reading because teens are under enormous pressure, as the boys in the book were then.
'A novel that made such a deep impression on me at sixteen that I can still conjure the atmosphere in my fifties: of yearning, infatuation mingled indistinguishably with envy, and remorse' Lionel Shriver
An American coming-of-age tale during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to the second world war.
Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual.…
Where to start? I’d read The Secret History and found it mesmerizing, but I loved this book more. It was more personal, and I couldn’t get enough of it.
I loved the premise and the relationships between the characters, even though they were completely flawed. I bought into everything they did and thought and wondered what I would have done in the same circumstances and conditions. The writing is extraordinary, and anyone who loves to read prose that sings will adore this book as I did.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2014 Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the…
Most of the books about boarding school (prep school) focus on boys and what happened to them or how horney they were. But Sittenfelt dares to focus on a girl at prep school and what she goes through to fit in. I was drawn into her world and could feel everything she went through.
I liked the crisp writing and lack of feeling sorry for the main character, even though she was treated badly. I wanted her to feel better about herself and her situation, but as she got pulled further and further into what others wanted her to be and what she herself turned into just to fit in, I wanted her to rise above it all and find out who she really was. But I also remembered what all that was like, and it felt true to me.
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.…
It’s a harrowing and all-engrossing book. You can’t look away—at least I couldn’t. It’s like you’re watching a train slowly colliding with a bridge, and everyone safely sitting in their seats comes flying every which way.
I could feel for the teenage boy being pulled into this maelstrom, but at the same time, I felt as if I was right in there with him, seduced by a charismatic user into an insane situation. I wanted this boy to pull himself out, and when he collapsed, I wanted to sit by him, hold him tight, and help him heal.
The story is about an emotional plane spinning out of control. As I read, I was desperate to take over the controls but couldn’t, so I just HAD to keep reading.
A coming of age story set in Provincetown, Truro, and Dennis Cape Cod during the summer of 1979. Sixteen-year-old Danny Halligan is seeking to define his sexual identity, struggling to navigate his feeling toward 18-year old childhood friend Liam Preston. Their lives spiral out of control when they meet 21-year-old Gracie Rose, a charismatic photographer and Yale dropout with a vision of a flesh festival on film.
Danny finds his mind unravelling as he is caught up in a torrent of drugs, sex and photography. Entire days are lost in drug fuelled grappling and flesh wars in a massive tree…
A few books leave me with a mental image that just never dissipates. Life of Pi was one of these. A boy in a boat with a Bengal tiger that eats the other rescued animals but leaves the boy alone? How can I ever forget that imagery? What an incredibly inventive allegorical story.
There’s another scene—I won’t reveal it here for those who’ve never read the book—that still gives me chills and leaves me in awe. Of course, it’s a nighttime scene when all the scary phantoms appear. It left me wondering if I would ever look at a tree the same way. I was enthralled by this story, and the writing is simply superb.
After the sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan—and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger.
Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi Patel, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with the tiger, Richard Parker, for 227 days while lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his…
During her first week at coed Quaker prep Foxhall School, sassy Susannah Greenwood, one of two girls who've entered as sophomores, gets pulled into the cool girls' clique.
While the school is instructing her in the moral and ethical tenets of the Quaker faith, the cool girls allow her to enter their world beyond the rule book—but in trying to find a balance between idealistic faith and the reality of a competitive system, Susannah runs afoul of the school's most authoritarian dean and befriends the only other new sophomore, a brainy, socially inept outcast. Then, her new friend runs away after being shamed by the dean, and Susannah finds herself caught between the two forces of loyalty and authority and must decide which to obey.
From the time I was a girl, I’ve loved stories that put a lump in my throat even as I’m laughing. As a fiction writer, that funny-sad tone is the one I go for in my own work. I gravitate toward female protagonists of all ages who break the mold—women who are intelligent and strong but who also have unconventional, quirky personalities. Women who can be hilarious, infuriating, and heartbreaking—sometimes all at once. Because they are complex and unique, these women tend to struggle with life’s challenges more than their contemporaries. That’s what makes their stories so interesting, and why I have chosen the books on this list.
When Mar’s husband divorces her, she reacts by abandoning everything in her past: her home, her friends, even her name. Though it's not easy starting over, she’s ready for new adventures—as long as she can keep things casual. Each month, Mar goes from one acquaintance to the next: a fellow gym member down on her luck, a flirty hip-hop instructor, a bossy but comical consultant. . . and a handsome novelist who wants more than she can give. Mar learns from each encounter. But can she open herself up to true connection?
Surrounded by quirky, endearing characters, Mar navigates her…
"A fun, entertaining novel! I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't enjoy this book as much as I did." -Leslie A. Rasmussen, award-winning author
When Mar Meyer's husband divorces her for another woman, she reacts by abandoning everything in her past: her home, her friends, even her name. Though it's not easy to start over, Mar is young-looking, fit, and ready for new adventures-as long as she can keep things casual.
With each passing month, Mar goes from one acquaintance to the next. Among them: a fellow gym member down on her luck, a flirty hip-hop instructor, a bossy but comical…
