In their search for wisdom and ways to improve themselves, many people turn to the nonfiction section of the library. Self-help, in particular, is one of the most popular areas of borrowing, and invites readers to self-reflection. We’re drawn to self-help for the sense that it might help us solve problems and improve ourselves.
But what if fiction has some of these same lessons for us? And what if story, with the contours we’ve developed for it over millennia, is part of processing those problems: what if we don’t just need this “one weird trick”, but actually we need the storytelling itself to transform ourselves? After all, the best self-help books are rife with anecdotes drawn from “real life”. Great fiction is also drawn from life, even as it is constructed by imagination.
Why the 'Coming of Age' story?
The coming-of-age story is a great place to seek out the story as a form of solace and self-help because in it we see characters stumble into difficulties and uncertainties, question their values and desires, and pull through.
Growing up isn’t a matter of setting out to achieve everything you want and succeeding; rather it is a process of encountering the world and the setbacks it throws at you and finding in the self a way to keep moving forward. Spending time with characters who are themselves engaged in self-reflection and facing challenges can offer us as readers a sense of possibility, a way to enact our own paths forward.
The coming-of-age story gets part of its pleasure from its trajectory. While many novels rely on the marriage plot for structure and thus consider the protagonist’s relationship status as the important “fact” of the story, the coming-of-age story considers the settling into the self as more important than any other feature of the character’s life and story. A great coming of age novel may end with its central character in a relationship or simply standing on his or her own two feet—it doesn’t matter. What matters is the desire for greater clarity about who he or she is, just like we in our own lives are often seeking that greater clarity.
Coming of age stories are for everyone. Most would be classified as YA or adult fiction, but even a book like Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women can be seen among works designated as “children’s classics” today and available in junior fiction.
Here are some of our recommendations for great coming of age stories:
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Also available in Large Print and as an eBook (Libby).
Asked by her publisher to try her hand at a “book for girls”, Louisa May Alcott produced Little Women, a work that has found a hungry readership ever since. This work, about the four March sisters and the ways they strive to develop themselves and care for each other, endures as an example of a work comprising individuals who each identify their flaws and set about living ordinary and extraordinary lives. The book has also been a rich source text for filmmakers, with many adaptations over the years. The most recent film version, by Greta Gerwig, is also a treat.
David Copperfield and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
David Copperfield - also available as eAudio (BorrowBox), eBook (Libby), you can also find an abridged version from our English Language Support collection.
These are not the only two novels by Dickens that a reader might claim as coming-of-age stories, but they are the most clearly shaped by the trajectory of a character heading into adulthood. In David Copperfield, we see Dickens draw on his most autobiographical material: Charles Dickens was haunted through his life by his early experiences of his father’s imprisonment in a debtor’s prison and his own experience of child labour when sent out to work in a blacking factory. Watching Copperfield overcome the challenges of his life is a pleasure.
Great Expectations - also available as eAudio (BorrowBox), eBook (Libby)
In Great Expectations, Pip is plucked out of obscurity to be made a gentleman. In both novels, Dickens captures the perspective of childhood with great emotion while taking the reader into the protagonist’s questions regarding how to live.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Also available as an illustrated edition.
It is easy to let Plath’s death overshadow her story. The Bell Jar is a work that contains real darkness, but it is also the work that shows the brilliance of Plath. Written during a period when treatment for mental illness was far more intrusive, The Bell Jar shows both human despair and human grit.
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges are Not the Only Fruit marked the debut of an important and prolific voice in contemporary literature. In what might today be called an auto-fiction, Winterson writes the story of a girl named Jeanette raised by adoptive parents in a strict Pentacostal family who realize that she experiences “unnatural passions”. A now-classic coming out story, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit is also a story of a working-class family and a story of the grip a strict religious upbringing can have.
Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta
Also available as eAudio (BorrowBox).
Looking for Alibrandi remains a touchstone of Australian young adult fiction. Josephine Alibrandi is the youngest of multi-generational household of Italian-Australian women. Her final year of high school sees her grapple with her position in the world: while romance and family relationships are inevitably part of her experience, her position in her school and her acceptance of herself not as an outsider but as a potential leader.
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
In Eugenides’s novel The Virgin Suicides a nameless chorus of boys—a “we”—watch a family of girls and the tragedies that unfold in their house. This book reveals how much our experience is informed by what we witness, by how we pay attention, as much as it is by what happens to us directly. A haunting novel, The Virgin Suicides offers readers the chance to reflect on the encounters that stay with them for years, the way that the inexplicable marks us and shapes our understanding.
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep is a boarding school fiction for the modern age. Lee Fiora attends a prestigious New England prep school in Massachusetts on a scholarship and contends with her status as a scholarship student. In an institution full of privilege, Lee feels unable to exist on equal footing with her peers who come from money, and is a watchful protagonist, trying to understand what it takes to fit in—to blend in.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Also available as an eBook (Libby).
Nobel-prize winning author Kazuo Ishiguro is not confined to realism: in Never Let Me Go we find ourselves firmly in the realm of science fiction in a near future in which cloning is part of everyday life. Within this setting, the search for self and fulfillment gains eeriness and makes the reader question what it is that makes us human. This question is, perhaps, central to all the ways we strive to be better.