Top ten literary teenagers

Will Davis' first novel, My Side of the Story, was published in 2007 and took that year's Betty Trask prize. His new book is Dream Machine.

For the Guardian, he named a top ten list of literary teenagers. One teen on the list:

Esther Greenwood in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

For many people Holden Caulfield is the ultimate literary teenage creation – but 19-year-old Esther Greenwood must surely run a close second. Brutal, frank and moving, it is impossible not to read her disaffected journey and think of Plath herself.

Read about another teen on Davis' list.

Related: The first sentence of The Bell Jar--“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.” --is Ali Smith's favorite opening line of a novel.

--Marshal Zeringue