The best books about the pain of growing up

“Tell me what you can’t forget, and I’ll tell you who you are.”

Thus begins Marlena, Julie Buntin’s debut novel about Marlena and Cat, who meet as fifteen-year-olds in rural Michigan. Their friendship is intense and complicated, and right from the start, we know that Cat is the only one who makes it out alive.

Buntin’s writing perfectly captures the voice and texture of adolescence, and her book is a model for how to maintain tension in a story when you find out early on (page 6 to be exact) that one of the main characters is dead.

The sections featuring Cat as an adult show that while she may have left her small town behind, she can’t escape her past. 

You don’t need me to recommend Ferrante, but I will anyway.

A ferocious story about the pain of leaving childhood behind, Ferrante tells the story of Giovanna, a sheltered only child whose life changes when she overhears her father compare her to his sister Vittoria, from whom he is estranged: “She’s getting the face of Vittoria.”

With that, Giovanna is thrown into an existential crisis that leads her to connect with her mysterious aunt, the dark side of Ferrante’s beloved Naples as well as herself. 

Ferrante understands the cruelty of women better than anyone and creates drama with the subtlest glance or turn of phrase.

Here she is at the height of her power, weaving a tense, glittering story that revolves, in part, around who is the rightful owner of a bracelet.

Hailed as the first novel of the #MeToo movement, Russell’s debut grabs you by the throat and never lets you go.

Vanessa Wye is a bright, insecure fifteen-year-old when she meets Jacob Strane, her magnetic and manipulative English teacher. Before long, their relationship crosses the line into abuse.

Beautifully written and emotionally gutting, Russell succeeds above all in showing the long tail of abuse. We watch as Vanessa loses her innocence twice; first, at the hands of Strane and later as she realizes that what she thought was a great love story was in fact anything but.

Shapiro’s first memoir tells the story of the car accident that killed her father and seriously injured her mother, the event that “divides [her] life into before and after.”

At the time of the accident, Shapiro is adrift, a college dropout, involved in a toxic relationship with an older man. The accident, and its aftermath, forces her to wake up from her extended adolescence and face adulthood head on, to ultimately decide the kind of person she wants to be.

There’s nothing I don’t love about this novel: its Cambridge, Massachusetts setting; pitch-perfect descriptions of restaurant work; love triangle.

It’s 1997, and Casey Peabody wants to be a writer. “You know,” a man says after asking how her novel is going, “I just find it extraordinary that you think you have something to say.”

Throughout this gorgeous novel about art, commerce, love, and grief, Casey must hold fast to that truth—that she does have something to say—despite the world’s best efforts at snuffing it out.

A quietly revolutionary portrait of a woman on the brink, Writers and Lovers shows us how to let go of the story we’ve been brought up to tell about ourselves.