18 books like Portnoy's Complaint
The green years
This is a precursor of Shannon's Way , detailing the struggles of the orphaned Robert Shannon to obtain education with the ultimate aim of becoming a medical researcher. A little long for a rather slight plot
Shares: Coming of age in fiction, Young men in fiction, Young men, Coming-of-age
Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve (Library of Wales)
Widely acclaimed for its warm humor, lyricism, and honesty, this accurate evocation of the 1930s has become a classic. In this delightful autobiographical novel, Dannie Abse skilfully interweaves public and private themes, setting the fortunes of a Jewish family in Wales against the troubled backdrop of the times: unemployment, the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, and the Spanish Civil War.
Shares: Jewish families, Young men, Coming-of-age
Andy Grant's pluck
This is the story of a hardworking young man determined to make the best of his opportunities. Andy is forced to drop out of Penhurst Academy to help his father on the farm. Accepting this, Andy returns home then decides to form his fate. With the help of a wealthy benefactor, he moves from his small town and is lead through work traveling across the country. This book is part of a series of rags…
Shares: Coming of age in fiction, Coming-of-age
Windy McPherson's son
This is a Historical Fiction Book. The bookl tells that A young boy grows up in rural Iowa. "At the beginning of the long twilight of a summer evening, Sam McPherson, a tall big-boned boy of thirteen, with brown hair, black eyes, and an amusing little habit of tilting his chin in the air as he walked, came upon the station platform of the little corn-shipping town of Caxton in Iowa. It was a…
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His Whole Life
1 volume ; 20 cm
Shares: Mothers and sons, Families
Everything Is Illuminated
A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, however, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into new forms; a 'blind' old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis, Jr,…
Shares: Jewish families, Young men
金閣寺
The son of a poor rural priest becomes an acolyte at the Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Mizoguchi had built up an image of ideal beauty in his mind based on this Golden Pavilion; this ideal image causes him to feel disappointed in any supposed form of beauty, even the actual physical Golden Pavilion. He comes under the influence of Kashiwagi, a fellow student with a very bitter view of life.
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The last Puritan
"Published in 1935, George Santayana's The Last Puritan was the American philosopher's only novel and it became an instant best seller, immediately linked in its painful voyage of self-discovery to The Education of Henry Adams. It is essentially a novel of ideas expressed in the birth, life, and early death of Oliver Alden. Oliver escapes puritanical self-destruction, the inability to celebrate…
Shares: Young men, Coming-of-age
Brighton Beach memoirs
A comedy built around the Jerome family during the Depression and focusing on fifteen-year-old, Eugene, preoccupied with sex and the Yankees.
Shares: Jewish families, Coming-of-age
La chartreuse de Parme
Headstrong and naive, the young Italian aristocrat Fabrizio del Dongo is determined to defy the wrath of his right-wing father and go to war to fight for Napoleon. He stumbles on the Battle of Waterloo, ill-prepared, yet filled with enthusiasm for war and glory. Finally heeding advice, Fabrizio sneaks back to Milan, only to become embroiled in a series of amorous exploits, fuelled by his…
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The turmoil, a novel
Booth Tarkington grew up in Indianapolis, and attended Princeton University. He set much of his fiction in Indiana. Tarkington was one of the more popular novelists of his time, and in 1921 booksellers rated him in a poll as the most significant contemporary American author.
-Wikipedia entry for Tarkington
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Sons and Lovers
Sons and Lovers, a story of working-class England, is D. H. Lawrence’s third novel. It went through various drafts, and was titled “Paul Morel” until the final draft, before being published and met with an indifferent reaction from contemporary critics. Modern critics now consider it to be D. H. Lawrence’s masterpiece, with the Modern Library placing it ninth in its “100 Best English-Language…
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Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
Edición de Manuel José González.
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The Chosen
It's about two jewish boys from different jewish sects with very differing doctrine. The kids meet in the unlikely circumstance of a baseball game, and a terrible accident, that leads them to be lifelong friends
Shares: Jewish families, Coming-of-age
The Last Samurai
"Ludo, age six, is a prodigy. His mother, Sibylla, raises him alone and tries hard to keep his voracious intellect satisfied, while she struggles to make ends meet. With her exasperated guidance, he teaches himself Greek, so that he can read The Odyssey, before moving on to study Hebrew, Arabic, Inuit, and Japanese. And both Sibylla and Ludo share a passion for Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, which…
Shares: Mothers and sons, Coming-of-age
The Good Luck Of Right Now
When his mother dies, 38-year-old Bartholomew Neil, who doesn't know how to be on his own, discovers a letter in his mother's underwear drawer that causes him to write a series of highly intimate letters to actor Richard Gere, while embarking on a quest to find out where he belongs.
Shares: Mothers and sons, Coming-of-age, Families
The secret wisdom of the earth
"After witnessing the death of his younger brother in a terrible home accident, 14-year-old Kevin and his grieving mother are sent for the summer to live with Kevin's grandfather. In this peeled-paint coal town deep in Appalachia, Kevin quickly falls in with a half-wild hollow kid named Buzzy Fink who schools him in the mysteries and magnificence of the woods. The events of this fateful summer…
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![Cover of David Copperfield [adaptation]](/covers/6486184.jpg)
David Copperfield [adaptation]
A simplified edition of the autobiographical novel whose hero, an orphan boy in nineteenth-century England, successfully overcomes an unhappy childhood.
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