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Oyasumi Punpun

Inio Asano · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Ham on Rye

Charles Bukowski · 288 pages

In what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, women, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D. H. Lawrence, Ham on Rye of

BildungsromanChildhood TraumaBleakToxic Family Dynamics
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Naruto, Vol. 01: The Tests of the Ninja

Masashi Kishimoto · 192 pages

JapanBildungsromanChildhood TraumaGraphic Novel & Manga
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Girl in Pieces

Kathleen Glasgow · 416 pages

Charlotte Davis is in pieces. At 17 she's already lost more than most people do in a lifetime. But she's learned how to forget. The broken glass washes away the sorrow until there is nothing but calm. You don't have to think about your father and the river. Your best friend, who is gone forever. Or your mother, who has nothing left to give you. Every new scar hardens Charlie's heart just a lit

BildungsromanChildhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsBleak
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Wonderland

Joyce Carol Oates · 511 pages

Hailed by Library Journal as “the greatest of Oates’s novels,” Wonderland is the capstone of a magnificent literary excursion that plunges beneath the glossy surface of American life. Spanning from the Great Depression to the turbulent Vietnam War era, Wonderland is the epic account of Jesse Vogel, a boy who emerged from a family tragedy with his life spared but his world torn apart. Orphaned

BildungsromanChildhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsDark
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All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

Bryn Greenwood · 392 pages

"As the daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. It's safer to keep her mouth shut and stay out of sight. Struggling to raise her little brother, Donal, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible adult around. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the starry night sky above the fields behind her house, until one night her star gazing caus

BildungsromanChildhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsTeen Protagonist
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Push

Sapphire · 176 pages

Precious Jones, an illiterate sixteen-year-old, has up until now been invisible: invisible to the father who rapes her and the mother who batters her and to the authorities who dismiss her as just one more of Harlem's casualties. But when Precious, pregnant with a second child by her father, meets a determined and highly radical teacher, we follow her on a journey of education and enlightenment as

BildungsromanChildhood TraumaBleakTeen Protagonist
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The Neon Bible

John Kennedy Toole · 162 pages

The first novel by the Pulizer Prize-winning author of A Confederacy Of Dunces. David is a young boy growing up in a small Southern town in the 1940s. From his porch, David can see the whole valley, including the neon Bible that lights up the sky, emblem of the God-fearing folk who snub his family because Poppa can't afford the church dues.

BildungsromanBleakTeen ProtagonistDark
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Go Tell It on the Mountain

James Baldwin · 226 pages

In one of the greatest American classics, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power

BildungsromanToxic Family DynamicsChildhood TraumaTeen Protagonist
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Choke

Chuck Palahniuk · 304 pages

Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be "saved" by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor's life, go on to send checks to support him. When he's not pulling this

Childhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsBleakDark
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Surrender

Sonya Hartnett

Toxic Family DynamicsChildhood TraumaBleakDark
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Dragon Head, Volume 1

Minetaro Mochizuki · 192 pages

BleakJapanGraphic Novel & MangaDark
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Viper in the fist

Herve Bazin · 183 pages

BildungsromanChildhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsDark
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Half Bad

Sally Green · 477 pages

Now a major new Netflix series entitled The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself. In a world divided between good and evil, what happens when you're both? Nathan Byrn is the illegitimate son of the world's most dangerous witch. Kept in a cage by the Council of Fairborn witches, who believe he is destined to follow the same destructive path as his father, Nathan must find a way to unlock his full

Childhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsBleakDark
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The Push Man and Other Stories

Yoshihiro Tatsumi · 224 pages

"Over four decades ago, Yoshihiro Tatsumi expanded the horizons of comics story-telling by using the visual language of manga to tell gritty, literary short stories about the private lives of everyday people. He has been called "the grandfather of Japanese alternative comics" and has influenced generations of cartoonists, but, until now, the majority of his work has remained unavailable outside of

JapanGraphic Novel & MangaBleakDark
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Tricks

Ellen Hopkins · 627 pages

Five teenagers find themselves stuck in a horrifying wold of sexual slavery

Childhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsBleakDark
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Tokyo Ghoul, Vol. 1

Sui Ishida · 224 pages

JapanGraphic Novel & MangaBleakDark
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More

Hakan Gunday · 398 pages

"The award-winning More, by one of Turkey's leading underground writers, is the world's first novel about the refugee crisis. "The illegals climbed into the truck, and, after a journey of two hundred miles, they boarded ships and were lost in the night." Gaza lives on the shores of the Aegean Sea. At the age of nine he becomes a human trafficker, like his father. Together with his father and local

Childhood TraumaToxic Family DynamicsBleakDark
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A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess · 188 pages

A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novel by English writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence. The teenage protagonist, Alex, narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him. The book is partially written in a Russian-influenced argot called "Na

BleakBildungsromanDarkLiterary Fiction
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Your Lie in April, Vol. 1

Naoshi Arakawa

Kosei Arima was a piano prodigy until his cruel taskmaster of a mother died suddenly, changing his life forever. Driven by his pain to abandon piano, Kosei now lives in a monotonous, colorless world. Having resigned himself to a bland life, he is surprised when he meets Kaori Miyazono, a violinist with an unorthodox style. Can she bring Kosei back to music, and back to life?

JapanChildhood TraumaGraphic Novel & MangaTeen Protagonist
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Mars, Volume 10

Fuyumi Soryo · 192 pages

Childhood TraumaJapanGraphic Novel & MangaTeen Protagonist
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Purple Hibiscus

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 307 pages

“One of the most vital and original novelists of her generation.” —Larissa MacFarquhar, The New Yorker From the bestselling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and attend an exclusive missionary school. They're completely shielded fro

BildungsromanToxic Family DynamicsTeen ProtagonistDark
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Back Roads

Tawni O'Dell · 352 pages

"Harley Altmyer, the heartbreaking and lovable hero of Tawni O'Dell's debut novel, should be in college drinking Rolling Rock and chasing girls. He should be freed from his stifling coal town, with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead, he's marooned in the Pennsylvania backwoods caring for his three beloved but unruly younger sisters. He has, at best, a shaky hold on the vicissitudes o

Childhood TraumaBleakTeen ProtagonistDark
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Mira Corpora

Jeff Jackson · 186 pages

Literary and inventive, but also fast-paced and gripping, Mira Corpora charts the journey of a young runaway. A coming-of-age story for people who hate coming-of-age stories, featuring a colony of outcast children, teenage oracles, amusement parks haunted by gibbons, mysterious cassette tapes, and a reclusive underground rockstar. With astounding precision, Jackson weaves a moving tale of discover

BildungsromanChildhood TraumaDarkLiterary Fiction
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Nicholas Dane

Melvin Burgess · 408 pages

When Nick's mother dies unexpectedly, the 14 year old is sent straight into a boy's home. There he learns that violence and intimidation keep order. The deputy head Mr Creal grooms Nick with sweets and solace until he can take no more and escapes into a life of crime with a modern Fagin and cheeful boy named Rasta.

Childhood TraumaBleakTeen ProtagonistDark

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