18 books like All the ugly and wonderful things
Demi-gods
"Atmospheric and lushly detailed, Demi-Gods captures the wonder and menace of adolescence in ways both unsettling and profound." --Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train and A Piece of the World "A brutally beautiful coming-of-age story that sings with language as lovely, wild, and full of ominous longing as the young woman at its center." --Robin Wasserman,…
Shares: Dysfunctional families, Bildungsromans
Asymmetry
Explores the imbalances that spark and sustain dramatic human relations, tracing the overlapping stories of a young American editor's relationship with a famous older writer, an unexpected New York romance during the early years of the Iraq War and an Iraqi-American man who is detained by immigration officers in Heathrow.
Shares: Literary, Family life, Coming-of-age
World's fair
Recalls a certain New York City boyhood in the 1930s, through the eyes of the child himself and then him as an adult trying to reconstruct the past.
Shares: Children, Bildungsromans
The tears of dark water
"Daniel and Vanessa Parker are an American success story. He is a Washington, D.C. power broker, and she is a physician with a thriving practice. But behind the gilded fac̦ade, their marriage is a shambles, and their teenage son, Quentin, is self-destructing. In desperation, Daniel dusts off a long-delayed dream of theirs--a sailing trip around the world. Little does he know, the voyage he hopes…
Shares: Dysfunctional families, Family life
A good country
"Laguna Beach, California, 2009. Alireza Courdee, a fourteen-year-old straight-A student and chemistry whiz, takes his first hit of pot. In as long as it takes to inhale and exhale, he is transformed from the high-achieving son of Iranian immigrants into a happy-go-lucky stoner. He loses his virginity, takes up surfing, and sneaks away to all-night raves. For the first time, Reza--now Rez--feels…
Shares: Literary, Bildungsromans, Coming-of-age
The porcupine of truth
Seventeen-year-old Carson Speier is bored of Billings, Montana, and resentful that he has to help his mother take care of his father, a dying alcoholic whom he has not seen in fourteen years--but then he meets Aisha, a beautiful African American girl who has run away from her own difficult family, and together they embark on a journey of discovery that may help them both come to terms with their…
Shares: Dysfunctional families, Family life, Bildungsromans
The Idiot
Embarking on her freshman year at Harvard in the early tech days of the 1990s, a young artist and daughter of Turkish immigrants begins a correspondence with an older mathematics student from Hungary while struggling with her changing sense of self, first love and a daunting career prospect.
Shares: Literary, Bildungsromans, Coming-of-age
Academy street
"A vibrant, intimate, hypnotic portrait of one woman's life, from an important new writer. Tess Lohan is the kind of woman that we meet and fail to notice every day. A single mother. A nurse. A quiet woman, who nonetheless feels things acutely--a woman with tumultuous emotions and few people to share them with. Academy Street is Mary Costello's luminous portrait of a whole life. It follows Tess…
Shares: Literary, Family life, Coming-of-age
Talent
An English grad student struggling with her dissertation about the intellectual history of inspiration desperately searches for a perfect case study to anchor her thesis, only to find it in the unlikeliest of places.
Shares: Literary, Coming-of-age
We Need New Names
Whenever foreigners visit Paradise they always ask Darling and her friends to smile for the camera. Here are some of the things Darling and her friends have to smile about: stealing guavas, gifts from NGOs, singing Lady Gaga at the tops of their voices. But they all want to go to the real paradise in America or Britain.
Shares: Children, Family life, Coming-of-age
A Little Life
A Little Life is a 2015 novel by American novelist Hanya Yanagihara. The novel was written over the course of eighteen months. Despite the length and difficult subject matter, it became a bestseller.
Shares: Dysfunctional families, Literary, Coming-of-age
Boy Swallows Universe
Raw, whimsical, existential, heartbreaking, modern mythology
Shares: Dysfunctional families, Bildungsromans
Candy
Banned upon its initial publication, the now-classic Candy is a romp of a story about the impossibly sweet Candy Christian, a wide-eyed, luscious, all-American girl. Candy -- a satire of Voltaire's Candide -- chronicles her adventures with mystics, sexual analysts, and everyone she meets when she sets out to experience the world.
Shares: Bildungsromans, Coming-of-age
Irma Voth
The stifling, reclusive life of nineteen-year-old Irma Voth, recently married and more recently deserted, is turned on its head when a film crew moves in to make a movie about the strict religious community in which she and her family live.
Shares: Dysfunctional families, Bildungsromans
色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年
Tsukuru Tazaki reexamines his simple life as he searches for his closest high school friends to discover why he was suddenly ostracized from their group.
"Cuando Tsukuru Tazakiera adolescente, se sentaba durante horas en las estaciones para ver pasar los trenes. Ahora, con treinta y seis años, es un ingeniero que diseña y construye estaciones de ferrocarril y que lleva una vida tranquila, tal…
Shares: Literary, Bildungsromans, Coming-of-age
Our young man
282 pages ; 20 cm
Shares: Literary, Coming-of-age
Brood
Two teenagers struggle with a horrific family legacy in the sequel to Chase Novak's novel, Breed. Thirteen years ago, a radical fertility doctor helped bring Adam and Alice Twisden into the world. The treatment came at a great cost: it turned the twins' parents into barbarous animals and threatens to transform the children, too. As Adam and Alice find themselves on the brink of maturity, they…
Shares: Family life, Coming-of-age
Life
In 1960s Norfolk, England, seventeen-year-old Clem Ackroyd lives with his mother and grandmother in a tiny cottage, but his life is transformed when he falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy farmer in this tale that flashes back through the stories of three generations.
Shares: Family life, Bildungsromans, Coming-of-age