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Herman

Lars Saabye Christensen · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Black Swan Green

David Mitchell · 344 pages

A novel. From hardcover: "Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen l

Child NarratorBittersweetComing of AgeLiterary Fiction
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Mathilda Savitch

Victor Lodato

A fiercely funny and touching debut novel about a girl with a sharp and mischievous voice of her own – and her quest to discover the truth about her sister's death'I want to be awful. I want to do awful things and why not? Dull is dull is dull is my life. Like now, it's night, not yet time for bed but too late to be outside, and the two of them reading reading reading with their eyes moving like t

Child NarratorComing of AgeBittersweetLiterary Fiction
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Lullabies for Little Criminals

Heather O'Neill · 330 pages

"Heather O'Neill's first novel is a story of a young life on the streets - and the strength, wits, and luck necessary for survival." "At thirteen, Baby vacillates between childhood comforts and adult temptation: still young enough to drag her dolls around in a vinyl suitcase yet old enough to know more than she should about urban cruelties. Motherless, she lives with her father, Jules, who takes b

Child NarratorBittersweetComing of AgeLiterary Fiction
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Funny Boy

Shyam Selvadurai · 315 pages

Der sensible Arjie spielt lieber als Braut verkleidet mit den Mädchen aus seiner tamilischen Großfamilie, als sich auf dem Kricketplatz auszutoben. Während die Unbeschwertheit der Kindertage weicht, beginnt er zunehmend die Widersprüche und Vorurteile der Erwachsenenwelt zu spüren.

Child NarratorBittersweetComing of AgeLiterary Fiction
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The White King

Gyorgy Dragoman · 320 pages

In the tradition of A CURIOUS INCIDENT and BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS: a young boy in a totalitarian state in a quest for his disappeared father.Eleven-year-old Djata makes sure he is always home on Sundays. It is the day the State Security came to take his father away, and he believes it will be a Sunday when his father is finally sent home again.In the mean time, Djata lives out a life of advent

Child NarratorComing of AgeBittersweetLiterary Fiction
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A Painted House

John Grisham · 465 pages

Using his own childhood for inspiration (and leaving the lawyers behind), bestselling author John Grisham sets A Painted House in 1950s rural Arkansas. During harvest time, together with hired Mexicans and hill people, seven-year-old Luke Chandler picks cotton on his family's rented 80 acres. But racial tension, a forbidden love affair, and murder cause Luke to grow up before he's ready.

Child NarratorBittersweetLiterary FictionComing of Age
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Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Roddy Doyle · 282 pages

In this national bestseller and winner of the Booker Prize, Roddy Doyle, author of the "Barrytown Trilogy," takes us to a new level of emotional richness with the story of ten-year-old Padraic Clarke. Witty and poignant--and adored by critics and readers alike--Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha charts the trumphs, indignities, and bewilderment of Paddy as he tries to make sense of his changing world.

Child NarratorBittersweetComing of AgeLiterary Fiction
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Belle Prater's Boy

Ruth White · 196 pages

When Woodrow's mother suddenly disappears, he moves to his grandparents' home in a small Virginia town where he befriends his cousin and together they find the strength to face the terrible losses and fears in their lives.

Child NarratorBittersweetComing of AgeBullying
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How Green Was My Valley

Richard Llewellyn · 495 pages

**This is a story set in a south Wales coal mining valley and tells of a family striving to improve their lives through hard work, education and their non-conformist faith.** The main character is the youngest son, Huw Morgan and his life's journey through the difficulties associated with the mining industry and the awful risks involved in deep coal mining in the **mid nineteenth century**. The

Child NarratorComing of AgeBittersweetLiterary Fiction
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Miguel Street

V.S. Naipaul · 176 pages

Child NarratorBittersweetComing of AgeLiterary Fiction
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The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963

Christopher Paul Curtis · 239 pages

The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

Child NarratorBittersweetComing of AgeTeen Protagonist
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Child NarratorComing of AgeLiterary FictionTeen Protagonist
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Labor Day

Joyce Maynard · 244 pages

With the end of summer closing in and a steamy Labor Day weekend looming in the town of Holton Mills, New Hampshire, thirteen-year-old Henry—lonely, friendless, not too good at sports—spends most of his time watching television, reading, and daydreaming about the soft skin and budding bodies of his female classmates. For company Henry has his long-divorced mother, Adele—a onetime dancer whose summ

Child NarratorComing of AgeBittersweetLiterary Fiction
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A Separate Peace

John Knowles · 196 pages

Gene Forrester looks back fifteen years to a World War II year in which he and his best friend were roommates in a New hampshire boarding school.

BittersweetLiterary FictionComing of AgeTeen Protagonist
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The Local News

Miriam Gershow · 360 pages

A deeply moving story of the complicated bond between brother and sister"Going missing was the only interesting thing my brother had ever done."Even a decade later, the memories of the year Lydia Pasternak turned sixteen continue to haunt her. As a teenager, Lydia lived in her older brother's shadow. While Danny's athletic skills and good looks established his place with the popular set at school,

Coming of AgeBittersweetLiterary FictionTeen Protagonist
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Anatomy of a Disappearance

Hisham Matar · 247 pages

Nuri is a young boy when his mother dies. It seems that nothing will fill the emptiness that her strange death leaves behind in the Cairo apartment he shares with his father. Until Mona. When Nuri first sees Mona, sitting in her bright yellow swimsuit by the pool of the Magda Marina holiday resort, the rest of the world vanishes.

Coming of AgeBittersweetLiterary FictionTeen Protagonist
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The Anatomy of Wings

Karen Foxlee

Ten-year-old Jennifer Day lives in a small mining town full of secrets. Trying to make sense of the sudden death of her teenage sister, Beth, she looks to the adult world around her for answers.As she recounts the final months of Beth's life, Jennifer sifts through the lies and the truth, but what she finds are mysteries, miracles, and more questions. Was Beth's death an accident? Why couldn't Jen

Child NarratorComing of AgeBittersweetLiterary Fiction
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Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Kate Atkinson · 381 pages

The story of Ruby's own life is told in thirteen chapters, all written in the first person, documenting key periods in Ruby's life from 1951 to 1992. In between each chapter are (non-consecutive) flashbacks that tell the story from the point of view of one of the other (mostly female) members of Ruby's family—including her great-grandmother Alice, her grandmother Nell and her mother Bunty.

Child NarratorComing of AgeBittersweetLiterary Fiction
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Assassin's Apprentice

Robin Hobb · 435 pages

Young Fitz is the bastard son of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised in the shadow of the royal court by his father's gruff stableman. He is treated like an outcast by all the royalty except the devious King Shrewd, who has him secretly tutored in the arts of the assassin. For in Fitz's blood runs the magic Skill--and the darker knowledge of a child raised with the stable hounds and rejected by hi

BittersweetComing of AgeTeen ProtagonistBullying
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Hideous Kinky

Esther Freud · 186 pages

Two little girls are taken by their mother to Morocco on a 1960s pilgrimage of self-discovery. For Mum it is not just an escape from the grinding conventions of English life but a quest for personal fulfilment; her children, however, seek something more solid and stable amidst the shifting desert sands.'Just open the book and begin, and instantly you will be first of all charmed, then intrigued an

Child NarratorBittersweetComing of AgeLiterary Fiction
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Nine Stories

J.D. Salinger · 208 pages

First published short story volume by the author of Catcher In The Rye.

Child NarratorBittersweetComing of AgeLiterary Fiction
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Portofino

Frank Schaeffer · 292 pages

Calvin, the irrepressibly endearing hero of Frank Schaeffer’s Calvin Becker Trilogy, is the son of a missionary family, and their trip to Portofino is the highlight of his year. But even in the seductive Italian summer, the Beckers can’t really relax. Calvin’s father could slip into a Bad Mood and start hurling potted plants at any time. His mother has an embarrassing habit of trying to convert

Child NarratorComing of AgeLiterary FictionTeen Protagonist
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The Good Son

Paul McVeigh · 242 pages

Set in Northern Ireland in the 1980s, 'The Good Son' is a funny, frightening and ultimately moving story centred around Mickey Donnelly, a boy struggling to come of age against the backdrop of bitter and brutal surroundings.

Child NarratorLiterary FictionTeen ProtagonistBullying
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The Tobacconist

Robert Seethaler · 234 pages

"Seventeen-year-old Franz Huchel journeys to Vienna to apprentice at a tobacco shop. There he meets Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, and over time the two very different men form a singular friendship. When Franz falls desperately in love with the music hall dancer Anezka, he seeks advice from the renowned psychoanalyst, who admits that the female sex is as big a mystery to him as it is to Franz

BittersweetComing of AgeLiterary FictionTeen Protagonist

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