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