Shani Boianjiu's debut novel is
The People of Forever Are Not Afraid.
One of her
five best novels about coming of age, as told to the
Wall Street Journal:
Bonjour Tristesse
by Françoise Sagan (1954)
Both loved and abhorred at the time of its publication—it was an international success—this wonderfully composed novel owes much of its power to its tone, its contrasts, its shamelessly enthusiastic portrait of the privileged classes and its endearing narrative voice. Seventeen-year-old Cécile tells of an eventful summer on the French Riviera with her wealthy 
widowed father and his mistresses. Cécile is naïve, selfish, perpetually bored, cruel and addicted to the simple pleasures in life. The interesting thing is, she knows it. "My love of pleasure seems to be the only consistent side of my character," Cécile admits. "One can be just as much attached to futilities as to anything else." Sagan, who was 18 when she published this comically dark debut, claimed that she wrote about the rich because they were the only people she knew. The themes of gratuitous privilege, sexual liberation and the amorality inherent in human nature are less sensational today, but the book's perfect tone of merciless candor remains a rarity—one that could only have been achieved, perhaps, by a writer both young and fearless.
Read about
another novel on Boianjiu's list.
Bonjour Tristesse is one of
Helena Frith Powell's five top books on glamour.
--Marshal Zeringue
One of her five best novels about coming of age, as told to the Wall Street Journal:
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