What makes a good coming of age novel

She was no better than a slave, Lyddie thought. The debt-ridden farm had been let to neighbour, and she and her brother had been hired out. Was the end really near, as their mother had said when she fled with the babies after the hungry bear had broken into their Vermont farm house? That winter of , the two children had been left to fend for themselves. If their long-gone father would return and set things right.

It is the promise of a new and better life that finally prompts Lyddie to journey to the mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts. As a factory girl, she will earn a wage—and be free.

No matter that she has to live in a crowded boarding house, that the clatter of incessant looms is deafening, that the murky lint-filled air brings on fevers and wracking coughs. Despite the menacing overseer, Lyddie works long, exhausting hours to be able to pay off the debt and regain her beloved farm. German lends us this mouthful of a word for an artist's novel.

Works in this tradition include stories of painters, sculptors, photographers, writers, dancers, and musicians. Chrononormativity refers to the expectation that certain things happen to people at certain times in their lives. A good example is university education. Historically, the normative time to study at university is between the ages of 18 and It is chrononormativity which leads us to expect coming-of-age narratives to feature young adults.

Some people are growing tired of coming-out stories, a subcategory of coming-of-age narrative. However, there are still plenty of storytelling gaps for non-mainstream experiences of the world. Our amatonormative , sex-normative world considers first kisses, first relationships, first fucks, moving in together, engagements, and marriages to be milestones of maturity.

These events are laid out like dominos that you must knock over to be considered a full-fledged adult. People who do not get married because their kind of partnership is not legally granted that privilege, people who do not bear children, people whose first kiss occurs after high school or not at all, etc, are all subjected to being considered not yet.

They are not yet adults, not yet mature, but they are expected to reach that domino eventually, and are ostracized if they do not. Sexuality and romanticism are tightly connected to adulthood — resulting in kids with non-allocishet identities being told they are too young to know, and many queer identities considered a phase that one will grow out of, and hysterical reactions to teenagers who date or have sex without parental permission.

Hetero Sexuality and romanticism are meant for adults, but you will become an adult some day! It seems that in YA novels, there may be only two ways to deal with growing up, death or self-denial.

We also see this pattern reimagined in other classics. For women, this often involved marriage to an ideal man who would respect and provide for them; for men, the options broadened to career goals and honoring a legacy, along with finding a suitable romantic partner. It was the well-educated middle and upper classes that could afford printed books during this era; it follows that this population of readers favored books that depicted themselves.

Despite various challenges, she maintains her self-respect and ends her story as a wealthy heiress married to the man she loves. While their protagonists still receive largely positive endings, their struggles are those of the lowest levels of poverty and human cruelty, divorced from the rarified dilemmas of the upper classes, limited to choosing a spouse and other more delicate pursuits. Such works shape legislative agendas that directly impact us today. And what does the 21st century have in store for us?

In this era when social media and test scores reduce us to the highlight reel of our best pictures and quips, or a number on a predetermined scale, these works ask us to question the ramifications of destroying the arena and shredding the rubric entirely. Tweet 0. Pin 0. Keep On Reading Is Writing a Waste of Time? Can Rejection be a Good Thing?

Dear Writer: An Open Letter. Kate Flournoy says:. July 12, at am. Hope Ann says:. Ingrid says:. July 17, at am. July 17, at pm. Archer says:. February 21, at pm.

Search for:. Log In Username:. Keep me signed in. First: what exactly is a coming-of-age novel? 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? However, I do have some rules for this list. Finally, even though the headline declares these 50 coming-of-age novels The Greatest, please remember that this is really only the compiled opinions of a few well-read editors.

As such, feel free to disagree, amend, or the best choice add on to this list in the comments section. Justin Torres, We the Animals. We wanted more.

We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry.