18 books like Arcadia

What to read after Arcadia — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

The Girls Emma Cline · 2016 · ★ 3.5 · 352p · ≈ 11h · Moderate Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who… Shares Nineteen sixties, Communal living, New York Times reviewed

Gadis Pantai Pramoedya Ananta Toer · 1987 · ★ 4.2 · 288p · ≈ 9h · Moderate "In a poor coastal fishing village, a beautiful girl unknowingly attracts the attention of a local aristocrat. Before she knows it, she is forced to marry this man she has never seen and leave behind all that is familiar to her - her carefree days spent helping her mother with daily tasks, dreamily listening to the sounds of the wind and the waves, and watching boats come and go. She is taken… Shares Bildungsromans

Sinister street Sir Compton Mackenzie · 1913 · 832p · ≈ 27h · Challenging Michael Fane arrives in the thin red house in Carlington Road to his new family of Nurse, Cook, Annie the housemaid, his younger sister Stella, and the occasional presence of Mother. From here, the novel follows the next twenty years of his life as he tries to find his place in the upper echelons of Edwardian society, through prep school, studies at Oxford, and his emergence into the wide world.… Shares Bildungsromans

Abyssinian Chronicles Moses Isegawa · 2000 · ★ 4.0 · 493p · ≈ 16h · Moderate "The teller of this tale is Mugezi, a quick-witted, sharp-eyed man whose life encompasses the traditional and the modern, the peaceful and the insanely violent, the despotic and the democratic. Born in a rural community in the early l960s, he is raised by his grandfather, a deposed clan chief, and his great-aunt, or "grandmother," after his parents immigrate to the capital city of Kampala. At… Shares Bildungsromans

Der Nachsommer Adalbert Stifter · 1900 · 927p · ≈ 30h · Challenging Shares Bildungsromans with this book.

Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture

Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture Helena Feder · 2016 · 192p · ≈ 6h · Moderate Shares Bildungsromans with this book.

The Invisible Circus Jennifer Egan · 1994 · 338p · ≈ 11h · Moderate In Jennifer Egan’s highly acclaimed first novel, set in 1978, the political drama and familial tensions of the 1960s form a backdrop for the world of Phoebe O’Connor, age eighteen. Phoebe is obsessed with the memory and death of her sister Faith, a beautiful idealistic hippie who died in Italy in 1970. In order to find out the truth about Faith’s life and death, Phoebe retraces her steps from San… Shares Hippies, Bildungsromans

Demi-gods Eliza Robertson · 2017 · ★ 3.0 · 235p · ≈ 7h · Moderate "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 Bildungsromans, New York Times reviewed

Our young man Edmund White · 2016 · ★ 4.0 · 304p · ≈ 10h · Moderate 282 pages ; 20 cm Shares New york, Coming-of-age, New York Times reviewed

The Barrowfields Phillip Lewis · 2017 · ★ 3.5 · 400p · ≈ 13h · Moderate "Just before Henry Aster's birth, his father -- outsized literary ambition and pregnant wife in tow -- reluctantly returns to the small Appalachian town in which he was raised and installs his young family in an immense house of iron and glass perched high on the side of a mountain. There, Henry grows up under the writing desk of this fiercely brilliant man. But when tragedy tips his father… Shares Homecoming, Bildungsromans, New York Times reviewed

World's fair E. L. Doctorow · 1985 · ★ 3.9 · 288p · ≈ 9h · Moderate 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 Bildungsromans, New york

Twelve Nick McDonell · 2002 · ★ 3.2 · 244p · ≈ 8h · Moderate "White Mike is clean. He has never smoked a cigarette in his life. Never had a drink, never sucked down a doobie. But White Mike has become a very good drug dealer, even though it started out as a one-shot deal with his cousin Charlie. White Mike was a good student, but he's been out of school for six months, and though some people might wonder what he's doing, no one seams to care very much that… Shares Bildungsromans, New york

After Tupac and D Foster Jacqueline Woodson · 2008 · ★ 3.8 · 160p · ≈ 5h · Moderate D Foster showed up a few months before Tupac got shot that first time and left us the summer before he died.The day D Foster enters Neeka and her best friend's lives, the world opens up for them. D comes from a world vastly different from their safe Queens neighborhood, and through her, the girls see another side of life that includes loss, foster families and an amount of freedom that makes the… Shares Bildungsromans, New york, Coming-of-age

Candy Terry Southern · 1964 · ★ 4.0 · 224p · ≈ 7h · Moderate 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

American Icon

American Icon Bryce G. Hoffman · 2012 · ★ 4.5 · 363p · ≈ 12h · Moderate At the end of 2008, Ford Motor Company was just months away from running out of cash. With the auto industry careening toward ruin, Congress offered all three Detroit automakers a bailout. General Motors and Chrysler grabbed the lifeline, but Ford decided to save itself. Under the leadership of charismatic CEO Alan Mulally, the man who had saved Boeing, Ford had put together a bold plan to unify… Shares New York Times reviewed

Canto for a Gypsy

Canto for a Gypsy Martin Cruz Smith · 1972 · ★ 4.0 · 191p · ≈ 6h · Moderate Gypsy antique dealer Roman Grey is back in one of Martin Cruz Smith's most beloved novels--​the exciting and fast-paced Canto for a Gypsy . The priceless Royal Crown of Hungary is on display in St Patrick's Cathedral in New York. Guarded by many, including the NYPD and the gypsy antique dealer Roman Grey, a heist is impossible. But everybody wants the legendary Crown of Saint Stephen. The… Shares New york

Seed Lisa Heathfield · 2015 · 342p · ≈ 11h · Moderate Pearl has grown up in a commune with several women and two men. She has no idea which ones are her real parents. When she gets her period for the first time it means she will be old enough to be chosen and bear a child with one of the two adult males. They worship Nature and depend on it to provide for them. When a new family arrives, Pearl grows close to the new boy, Ellis, who fills her with… Shares Communal living, Bildungsromans, Coming-of-age

Voices Ursula K. Le Guin · 2006 · ★ 3.4 · 336p · ≈ 11h · Moderate Young Memer takes on a pivotal role in freeing her war-torn homeland from its oppressive captors. Shares Bildungsromans, Coming-of-age

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