Coming-of-age novel Archives

Cover image for What a Time to be Alive by Jenny Mustard

What a Time to Be Alive by Jenny Mustard: A quietly accomplished, coming-of-age novel

25 April 2025 / 15 Comments

I read Jenny Mustard’s debut, Okay Days, back in 2023. Unflashy, perceptive and absorbing, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable novel which made me happy to put up my hand when What a Time to be Alive popped up on NetGalley. A coming-of-age story, it follows Sickan who’s changed her name from Siv hoping to reinvent herself […]

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Cover image for Fun and Games by John Patrick McHugh

Fun and Games by John Patrick McHugh: Growing up is hard to do

23 April 2025 / 22 Comments

The blurb for John Patrick McHugh’s Fun and Games came garlanded with praise from a slew of starry Irish literary names, not least Sally Rooney. I often wonder how that might feel for a writer; a kind of euphoric anxiety, perhaps. Set in the summer of 2009, McHugh’s novel follows seventeen-year-old John and his footballing

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Cover image for The Crow Road by Iain Banks

Blasts from the Past: The Crow Road by Iain Banks (1992)

30 August 2024 / 23 Comments

This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy in as many hands as I could. Iain Banks was one of those writers talented enough to excel in at least two genres. Not being

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Cover image for A Perfect Day to Be Alone by Nanae Aoyama

A Perfect Day to Be Alone by Nanae Aoyama (transl. Jesse Kirkwood): A poignant, funny coming-of-age story

24 May 2024 / 14 Comments

Nanae Aoyama’s A Perfect Day to Be Alone is already a bestseller in several European countries, translated into German, French and Italian before Jesse Kirkwood’s English version. Spanning a year in which twenty-year-old Chizu lives with an elderly distant relative, it’s a quiet coming-of-age story. It turned out that when you put three people with

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Cover image for Belladona by Anbara Salam

Belladonna by Anbara Salam: ‘Sometimes love isn’t enough’

15 July 2020 / 14 Comments

I’m a sucker for covers that fit their books well. When I spotted Anbara Salam’s Belladonna on Twitter, it was that strikingly evocative jacket that snagged my interest although I was concerned it might be a wee bit fluffy. While it’s certainly an easy read, fluffy’s not the word for this coming-of-age novel, set in

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North Facing by Tony Peake: A South African atonement

17 November 2017 / 19 Comments

The theme of adults manipulating children isn’t an unusual one in fiction – Atonement and The Go-Between are obvious examples – but the setting of Tony Peake’s new novel stood out for me. In it a man in his sixties has returned to South Africa where he was at boarding school, remembering the events which

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