The best coming-of-age novels that tell fascinating stories anyone can relate to

Salinger broke a lot of unspoken rules of fiction-writing–and thus life–with Catcher. It was emotionally cauterizing for me as a teenager while incessantly trying, and failing, at learning rules adults apparently didn’t want us to know.

I’m certain many of my contemporaries identified with Holden Caulfield’s stream-of-consciousness introspection as deeply as I did. And when I think back about it, I find myself once again in the grip of how it was: ferreting out how life works but getting no guidance from parents, teachers, or bosses, only the terror of making mistake after mistake until the world didn’t make sense any longer. Just as had happened to Holden, but at last, I understood I was not alone in my confusion.

This book lived in the back pocket of my Levi’s, then later in my military fatigues, for many years.

Although I first read it in the 1960s, I can still remember with near-perfect recitation Max Demian’s remark: “I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?” It became my lifelong guide to being different in a world constantly demanding conformity. My nonconformity got me into loads of trouble in the military, but it also kept me sane.

Some years later, my mentor described our affliction as the curse of consciousness, a rarefied state of thought and living itself that is inescapable, inevitably difficult, sometimes painful, but always worth the price of living its truth.  

As I read the first two paragraphs of this truly extraordinary novel, I smirked. The author, through the character of the father of the girl named Blue, was daring me to read this book. Oh boy, this is gonna be a good one, I thought, and it was.

Reading any novel is a trip inside the writer’s head–true also of music and art–and when I opened this book to the contents page, I discovered Pessl had named each chapter for another novel, which she topped off with a “Final Exam”!

I loved reading the sentences, not just for the story but for the stylistics, undertones, and superlatives. Her interestingly written novel about calamity physics is far more entertaining than, say, a college physics textbook.

This book was a revelation for me for two reasons: one, it’s a bildungsroman about a female, and two, it was published in 1899. Maybe three, for how it ends.

Is unrequited love the gold standard of relationships? Do most people settle for second best, perhaps without understanding why they let the greatest love of their life get away? Edna, the female protagonist, finds herself in this difficult situation. Her quandary is deep, and she lets the reader know just how painful it is.

I see Chopin as one of the earliest earnest authors of American naturalism, as powerful a storyteller as her contemporary male authors such as Frank Norris (McTeague) and Theodore Dreiser (An American Tragedy). 

Emotion, in particular love, knows no bounds of race, culture, past, or future. I think love reaches uncommon heights in times of stress, which accounts for falling in love with abandon–like in wartime. Or when culture curbs or forbids love’s expression.

So here in this book, Lin Kong, a doctor, feels constrained during the Chinese Cultural Revolution–perhaps seeing through its façade of freedom, particularly in his own marriage. And upon that conundrum rests the plot: Lin’s waiting 18 years (by law) for divorce so he can be with the woman he desires. But the longer he waits, the more he desires her; then, once the waiting is over, desire leaves him.

Perhaps it is better for Lin to live in never-ending desire? Was his grass greener on the other side?