100 books like The Lying Life of Adults

By Elena Ferrante, Ann Goldstein (translator),

Here are 100 books that The Lying Life of Adults fans have personally recommended if you like The Lying Life of Adults. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Americanah

Elizabeth Shick Author Of The Golden Land

From my list on immersion into world history and culture.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up dreaming of other worlds, both real and imagined. I’ve since had the great fortune of living in Angola, Bangladesh, Gambia, Italy, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, and Tanzania—each country as fascinating to me as the next. Yet there’s so much more of the world I want to experience! This is why I love novels that immerse me in the history and culture of foreign lands. By entering the hearts and minds of characters with different life experiences than myself, I feel a sense of connection that expands my own worldview. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have!

Elizabeth's book list on immersion into world history and culture

Elizabeth Shick Why did Elizabeth love this book?

Exquisitely written and profoundly wise, this is one of my all-time favorite novels. Ifemulu and Obinze meet in high school, forming a deep attachment that continues into university. When political turmoil in Nigeria forces them to emigrate to separate countries, their love story comes to an unexpected halt.

As I read this book, I was moved by Ifemulu’s struggle to recapture her sense of self and stirred by the grief she felt, both for her broken relationship and for her country. Alternating between Nigeria and the USA, the novel transported me into Ifemulu’s world, making me reflect anew on questions of race, identity, and belonging. 

By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked Americanah as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience - classics which will endure for generations to come.

How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined.

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria. Self-assured Ifemelu heads for America. But quiet, thoughtful Obinze finds post-9/11 America closed to him, and plunges into a dangerous undocumented life in London.

Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria,…


Book cover of Sula

Lori Latrice Martin Author Of White Sports/Black Sports: Racial Disparities in Athletic Programs

From my list on tensions in the African American experience.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was born and raised in Nyack, New York, and all of my degrees are from colleges and universities in New York. I have always been interested in race relations in America and understanding their causes and consequences. Hope and despair are two themes that run through the experiences of people of African ancestry in America. The books I selected include fiction and nonfiction works that highlight promises made and promises unfulfilled.

Lori's book list on tensions in the African American experience

Lori Latrice Martin Why did Lori love this book?

I love Toni Morrison's works and consider her one of my favorite authors. I would argue, as others have, that Morrison is one of the greatest American writers ever. I appreciate that the characters in all of her books, including this one, are always dynamic. I also appreciate how Morrison shares the main characters' traumas, tragedies, and triumphs.

By Toni Morrison,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked Sula as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Extravagantly beautiful... Enormously, achingly alive... A howl of love and rage, playful and funny as well as hard and bitter' New York Times

As young girls, Nel and Sula shared each other's secrets and dreams in the poor black mid-West of their childhood. Then Sula ran away to live her dreams and Nel got married.

Ten years later Sula returns and no one, least of all Nel, trusts her. Sula is a story of fear - the fear that traps us, justifying itself through perpetual myth and legend. Cast as a witch by the people who resent her strength, Sula…


Book cover of Milkman

Nell Freudenberger Author Of The Limits

From my list on what it’s really like to be a teenage girl.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in Los Angeles in the 80s and 90s. I was a shy teenager, an obsessive reader, and a secret writer.  I went to an all-girls high school where we wore uniforms, did a lot of homework, and mostly had no idea how to meet boys. The teen girls I encountered in movies, TV shows, and even literature were sexualized to the point of being unrecognizable to me. Now that I work with teenagers (and am a mom to one), I’m fascinated by the variability of girls this age, their wide-ranging intelligence, passions, and ways of being in the world. I love novels that reflect that complexity.

Nell's book list on what it’s really like to be a teenage girl

Nell Freudenberger Why did Nell love this book?

I loved this book because it tells the story of a young woman in a perilous political situation who doesn’t cave to horrifying violence or conform simply to stay safe. I admire the voice Burns creates for the main character, called “middle sister,” because it’s unlike any narration in any other novel. 

For me, the strangeness of middle sister’s narration gets at the disconnect between the way a young woman sees herself and the way the rest of the world sees her—as inconsequential, as a sexual object, as a target. I love the way that she thinks her way out of the traps all around her, using humor and clear-sightedness to survive ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland during the 1970s.  

By Anna Burns,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked Milkman as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Liberty fabric covered editions bring classics from the Faber backlist together with important modern titles, putting them in conversation and celebrating both the history and the future of Faber & Faber.

In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle, and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes 'interesting'. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed and…


Book cover of The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose

Nell Freudenberger Author Of The Limits

From my list on what it’s really like to be a teenage girl.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in Los Angeles in the 80s and 90s. I was a shy teenager, an obsessive reader, and a secret writer.  I went to an all-girls high school where we wore uniforms, did a lot of homework, and mostly had no idea how to meet boys. The teen girls I encountered in movies, TV shows, and even literature were sexualized to the point of being unrecognizable to me. Now that I work with teenagers (and am a mom to one), I’m fascinated by the variability of girls this age, their wide-ranging intelligence, passions, and ways of being in the world. I love novels that reflect that complexity.

Nell's book list on what it’s really like to be a teenage girl

Nell Freudenberger Why did Nell love this book?

I loved this book because it’s the best illustration of the stepmother-stepdaughter relationship that I’ve ever read. Flo and Rose’s conflicts over work, sex, and a woman’s place in the world made me remember exactly what it was like to be a teenager struggling to relate to older women in my life.

Like many of Alice Munro’s celebrated short stories, it’s about a young woman growing up in rural Ontario who strains against the prejudices of her small town, especially about girls’ education and ambition. “Who do you think you are?” is the question that comes up again and again in this novel-in-stories. Used as an insult, it challenges Rose to make a different life for herself without forgetting the women who came before her. 

By Alice Munro,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Beggar Maid as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE® IN LITERATURE 2013

In this series of interweaving stories, Munro recreates the evolving bond between two women in the course of almost forty years. One is Flo, practical, suspicious of other people's airs, at times dismayingly vulgar. the other is Rose, Flo's stepdaughter, a clumsy, shy girl who somehow leaves the small town she grew up in to achieve her own equivocal success in the larger world.


Book cover of Writers & Lovers

Virginia Pye Author Of The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann

From my list on a woman writer finding her own voice.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love novels that show female characters finding their way in life, and especially women who use writing to help themselves to grow and evolve. Finding my own voice through writing has been my way of staking my claim in the world. It hasn’t always been easy for us to tell our stories, but when we do, we’re made stronger and more complete. The protagonist of my novel The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann fights hard to tell her own story. I know something about being held back by male-dominated expectations and Victoria’s situation could easily take place today. But when women writers finally find their voices, the works they create are of great value. 

Virginia's book list on a woman writer finding her own voice

Virginia Pye Why did Virginia love this book?

Lily King’s Writers & Lovers is set in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1997, where my own novel takes place a century earlier. It’s a fictional coming-of-age story of a young woman who tries to write her way into adulthood.

Casey Peabody works as a waitress in Harvard Square, spends time with her aspiring writer friends, walks along the Charles River, and sits for hours at her desk trying to write, all of which I did in those same places at her same age and often with the same sense of longing—and which, incidentally, Victoria Swann does, too, albeit while wearing a floor-length skirt and using a fountain pen.

Casey, Victoria, and I, (and I assume Lily King herself), were not alone: so many people I’ve met over the years have spent time in their twenties hanging out around Harvard Square, anxious and waiting to become the grown-ups we hoped to be.…

By Lily King,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked Writers & Lovers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

#ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today
Emma Roberts Belletrist Book Club Pick
A New York Times Book Review’s Group Text Selection

"I loved this book not just from the first chapter or the first page but from the first paragraph... The voice is just so honest and riveting and insightful about creativity and life." —Curtis Sittenfeld 

An extraordinary new novel of art, love, and ambition from Lily King, the New York Times bestselling author of Euphoria

Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel Euphoria, Lily King returns with another instant New York Times bestseller:…


Book cover of My Dark Vanessa

Catherine Evans Author Of All Grown Up

From my list on books about girls lured into inappropriate relationships.

Why am I passionate about this?

Men have always been attracted to young women, who possess a glow that their mothers have possibly lost. Girls are more vulnerable and impressionable and are more likely to believe what they are told. Their passionate desire to be loved, combined with their conviction that no one understands them, makes them uniquely vulnerable to predators. But there is another side to the story. Girls do not passively wait to be seduced or exploited. They thrill in actively testing their own sexual power and often put themselves in physical and emotional danger with no understanding of the long-term consequences of relationships where the power dynamic leaves them exposed to exploitation and abuse.

Cathy's book list on books about girls lured into inappropriate relationships

Catherine Evans Why did Cathy love this book?

My Dark Vanessa is a highly compelling, if disturbing read. I loved the book as I related so closely to the idealistic fifteen-year-old Vanessa, who is groomed by her English teacher, Jacob Strane, believing him to be the love of her life.

The book opens to Vanessa at thirty-two, leading a lonely and unfulfilling life in a dead-end job at the beginning of the #MeToo era, when other girls come forward to accuse Strane. She finds herself torn: how can she do anything but defend him? Otherwise, she would have to admit to herself that their great love has been a great lie.

By Kate Elizabeth Russell,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked My Dark Vanessa as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An instant New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 DYLAN THOMAS AWARD

'A package of dynamite' Stephen King

'Powerful, compulsive, brilliant' Marian Keyes

An era-defining novel about the relationship between a fifteen-year-old girl and her teacher

ALL HE DID WAS FALL IN LOVE WITH ME AND THE WORLD TURNED HIM INTO A MONSTER

Vanessa Wye was fifteen-years-old when she first had sex with her English teacher.

She is now thirty-two and in the storm of allegations against powerful men in 2017, the teacher, Jacob Strane, has just been accused of sexual abuse by another former student.…


Book cover of Marlena

Daisy Alpert Florin Author Of My Last Innocent Year

From my list on the pain of growing up.

Why am I passionate about this?

My Last Innocent Year is about a young woman losing innocence and gaining wisdom (the flip side of the coin) as she does the hard and necessary work of becoming herself. As Isabel navigates the transition from child to adult, she discovers that adults are, in fact, as lost and confused as she is. The books I have chosen are ones that explore the sometime (often) painful process of growing up and the joy that comes from learning that our voice matters. As the mother of three teenagers, I feel I’m witnessing this transition in real time.

Daisy's book list on the pain of growing up

Daisy Alpert Florin Why did Daisy love this book?

“Tell me what you can’t forget, and I’ll tell you who you are.”

Thus begins Marlena, Julie Buntin’s debut novel about Marlena and Cat, who meet as fifteen-year-olds in rural Michigan. Their friendship is intense and complicated, and right from the start, we know that Cat is the only one who makes it out alive.

Buntin’s writing perfectly captures the voice and texture of adolescence, and her book is a model for how to maintain tension in a story when you find out early on (page 6 to be exact) that one of the main characters is dead.

The sections featuring Cat as an adult show that while she may have left her small town behind, she can’t escape her past. 

By Julie Buntin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Marlena as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Marlena is a vivid portrayal of an intoxicating friendship and the dangers it leads to; perfect for fans of The Girls by Emma Cline and My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante.

Everything about fifteen-year-old Cat's new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter, until she meets her neighbour, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat, inexperienced and desperate for connection, is quickly lured into Marlena's orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blonde hair. As the two girls turn the untamed landscape of their desolate small town into a kind of playground, Cat catalogues a…


Book cover of Slow Motion: A True Story

Priscilla Gilman Author Of The Critic's Daughter: A Memoir

From my list on loving and losing a complicated father.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm the daughter of a charismatic and complicated father, the late theater and literary critic and Yale School of Drama professor Richard Gilman. My memoir, The Critic's Daughter, tells the story of how I lost him for the first time when I was ten years old and over and over in the ensuing months and years; the book is my attempt to find him. I'm a former professor of English literature at Yale and Vassar, the mother of two boys, a book critic for the Boston Globe, and a literature, writing, and meditation teacher.

Priscilla's book list on loving and losing a complicated father

Priscilla Gilman Why did Priscilla love this book?

This book is a luminously honest, unflinching, and brave memoir by the marvelous Dani Shapiro, whose most recent memoir, Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love, caused a sensation when it was published in 2019. 

When Slow Motion begins, Dani is in her early 20s, adrift, rebelling against her Jewish heritage, dabbling in acting and modeling, involved in a dead-end affair with a married man. 

Then one night, a phone call changes everything- her parents have been in a dreadful car accident. Her father dies a few weeks later, and her mother requires months of intensive rehab.

Dani's tragic loss of the father she idolized and adored prompts a reckoning with her choices and a reevaluation of her life. Slow Motion is beautifully written, wrenching, and unwaveringly candid.

By Dani Shapiro,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Slow Motion as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From one of the most gifted writers of her  generation comes the harrowing and exqui-sitely written true story of how a family tragedy saved her life. Dani Shapiro was a young girl from a deeply religious home who became the girlfriend of a famous and flamboyant married attorney--her best friend's stepfather. The moment Lenny Klein entered her life, everything changed: she dropped out of college, began to drink heavily, and became estranged from her family and friends. But then the  phone call came. There had been an accident on a snowy road near her family's home in New Jersey, and…


Book cover of Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

Bart Yates Author Of The Language of Love and Loss

From my list on wiseass narrators and dysfunctional families.

Why am I passionate about this?

The stories I’ve loved the most in my life have all been about the richness of human relationships, told by a memorable narrator who can find humor and hope in almost everything, no matter how screwed up. Whether it’s Charles Dickens poking fun at his contemporaries in Victorian England or Armistead Maupin sending up friendship and love in San Francisco in the 1980s, I’m a sucker for well-told, convoluted, and funny tales about people who find life with other human beings difficult, but still somehow manage to laugh about it and keep on going. As the author of six novels myself, these are the kinds of stories I always try to tell.  

Bart's book list on wiseass narrators and dysfunctional families

Bart Yates Why did Bart love this book?

On the surface, this is a coming-of-age story with a protagonist similar to many others in the genre—bright, witty, snobbish, and pissed off at almost everybody he meets. But what makes this book so good is the narrator’s intelligence and self-awareness, and the complexity of all the characters and their relationships. 

My own upbringing was a far cry from the wealthy, highly-cultured world depicted here—I grew up in a tiny town in southern Iowa, and though there was a college in town I had little access to culture—yet I could completely relate to the gay narrator’s fish-out-of-water feeling and his desire to be understood. I also loved his close relationship with his grandmother, since my grandmother was equally important to me.    

By Peter Cameron,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is the story of James Sveck, a sophisticated, vulnerable young man with a deep appreciation for the world and no idea how to live in it. James is eighteen, the child of divorced parents living in Manhattan. Articulate, sensitive, and cynical, he rejects all of the assumptions that govern the adult world around him–including the expectation that he will go to college in the fall. He would prefer to move to an old house in a small town somewhere in the Midwest. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You takes place…


Book cover of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Marcia Aldrich Author Of Studio of the Voice

From my list on compelling books about the trouble between mothers and daughters.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in a woman-centered household, the youngest with two older sisters. I was the only child of my mother’s second marriage, and a space of ten and twelve years separated me from my sisters. My sisters and mother always felt like an intense unit that didn’t include me, and that yearning and outsider status defined my life and made me a lover of books about mothers and daughters and the female world.

Marcia's book list on compelling books about the trouble between mothers and daughters

Marcia Aldrich Why did Marcia love this book?

This is a quirky, hilarious, autobiographical coming-of-age story about a lesbian who grows up in a repressive English Pentecostal community.

Winterson’s creation of the mother is the most unique mother I’ve ever encountered—damaged, oppressive, deeply misunderstanding of her genius daughter. I found lots of commonalities between the conflicts Jeanette had with her difficult mother and my own experience, even though we live countries apart.

Winterson’s gusto and humor are inspiring.

By Jeanette Winterson,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Key Features:



Study methods
Introduction to the text
Summaries with critical notes
Themes and techniques
Textual analysis of key passages
Author biography
Historical and literary background
Modern and historical critical approaches
Chronology
Glossary of literary terms


Book cover of Americanah
Book cover of Sula
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