Fifty Great Novels for Adults That Adopt an Adolescent’s Point of View

(I’ve arranged these novels chronologically by the characters’ ages, from thirteen to eighteen, pinning each book as best I could (though it involved some guesswork) to the age of the youngest point-of-view character. You’ll find a companion list for characters age 0 to 12 here.)

 

  • age 13: Tamsin by Peter S. Beagle

  • age 13: The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys by Chris Fuhrman

  • age 13: Mathilda Savitch by Victor Lodato

  • age 13: Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

  • age 13: My Abandonment by Peter Rock

  • age 13: Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

  • age 14: Mouchette by Georges Bernanos

  • age 14: Long for This World by Michael Byers

  • age 14: Little Boys Come from the Stars by Emmanuel Dongala

  • age 14: Submarine by Joe Dunthorne

  • age 14: The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

  • age 14: Borderliners by Peter Høeg

  • age 14: Life at These Speeds by Jeremy Jackson

  • age 14: Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy

  • age 14: Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem

  • age 14: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

  • age 14: True Grit by Charles Portis

  • age 14: King Dork by Frank Portman

  • age 14: Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

  • age 14: Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

  • age 14: Marilou Is Everywhere by Sarah Elaine Smith

  • age 14: The Principles Behind Flotation by Alexandra Teague

  • age 15: The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton

  • age 15: Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim

  • age 15: The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez

  • age 15: The Chosen by Chaim Potok

  • age 15: Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore

  • age 15: More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon

  • age 16: Dare Me by Megan Abbott

  • age 16: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

  • age 16: So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell

  • age 16: Chicken by Chase Night

  • age 16: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

  • age 16: Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout

  • age 16: Lowboy by John Wray

  • age 17: The Virgins by Pamela Erens

  • age 17: Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

  • age 17: Billy and Girl by Deborah Levy

  • age 17: The Best People in the World by Justin Tussing

  • age 17: 03 by Jean-Christophe Valtat

  • age 17: Old School by Tobias Wolff

  • age 18: Jujitsu for Christ by Jack Butler

  • age 18: Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You by Peter Cameron

  • age 18: Closer by Dennis Cooper

  • age 18: Nova by Samuel R. Delany

  • age 18: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

  • age 18: Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson

  • age 18: A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride

  • age 18: America Pacifica by Anna North

  • age 18: This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

— September 28, 2020


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