The best bildungsroman books 📚

The Razor's Edge tells the story of Larry Darrell, a young American traumatized by his experiences in World War 1 seeking the Absolute. There are other characters in the story who have their own goals in life, which are materialistic, unlike Larry’s. The story indicates that how different people pursue different things in life, which ultimately define their life purpose. Larry’s abandonment of the conventional life and quest for the meaning of life provide him the freedom to live in the moment, whereas other characters are enslaved by their habits and fears.

Though technically a work of loose fiction based on his experiences as an intern, I do not feel it is right to have a list of medical memoirs without The House of God holding down the anchor. Several decades old now, it remains the standard for the delicate space between self-disclosure in medicine and irreverence. Physician writers know it can be hard to thread that particular needle, but Shem does it so well that there is seldom a medical student who comes through training who has not picked up a copy at one point or another. 

Grieving over the loss of her mother and the relentless abuse of her father, Lily goes in search of clues about her mother, hoping to find answers in a place she thinks her mother may have been connected with. During this quest, she finds herself having to examine her attitudes about interracial relationships. Kidd includes information about beekeeping and the black Madonna, both bodies of knowledge that symbolically contribute to the theme about roles that females play in the social order.