I also skewed towards “great” rather than “coming of age”-that is, if a novel was a perfect example of a genre, but just not that good, I might have eliminated it for one that was brilliant but less platonically correct. I rejected short story collections (even linked ones like Melissa Bank’s The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing) and stuck to one novel per writer (though sometimes I can’t help myself from throwing in an extra mention). I decided to discount anything written for children or young adults, which eliminates a few classics like The Outsiders, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, among others (but does not eliminate, say, The Catcher in the Rye, which Salinger wrote for adults).
However, I do have some rules for this list. Or at least we know it once we’re on the other side. But does a coming of age novel require demonstrable maturity in the end? Does said coming of age need to be the primary focus-in plot, in emotional weight-of the novel? Does the main character have to be a literal adolescent in the beginning? Under 21, maybe? The answer to all of these, I decided, was “usually, but not always.” Like you-know-what, we all know coming of age when we see it. So, as we embark on a new one, the Literary Hub office put their heads together to consider some of the greatest coming-of-age novels ever written, for discussing in the halls and reading under the covers.įirst: what exactly is a coming-of-age novel? Of course, it’s a novel in which someone becomes an adult, literally or metaphorically. When you’re young, you don’t measure time in calendar years-you measure it in school years. You pushed your best friend out of a tree and he broke his leg and now you’re dealing with the guilt. Your parents discover your secret hiding place and turn it into a mudroom. Your new boyfriend starts pretending not to know you. Family values will never be the same.The end of summer is traditional coming of age time. Throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family's most precious-and dangerous-asset.Īs the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins.
Their offspring include Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan.
Here is the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities (with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes).
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