The fifty best coming-of-age novels

Emily Temple is a senior editor at Lit Hub. Her first novel, The Lightness, will be published by William Morrow in 2020.

At LitHub she tagged the fifty greatest coming-of-age novels, including:

David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

While Mitchell is still best known for Cloud Atlas, readers should not sleep on his semi-autobiographical 2006 novel, which covers a year—well, thirteen months, to be precise, each recounted in a single chapter—in the life of a thirteen year old boy with a stammer. This is a quiet book, especially as compared to the rest of Mitchell’s oeuvre, but it captures a very specific, ever-changing moment in life with clarity and empathy—and not a small interest in the language that makes it all fit together.

Read about another entry on the list.

Black Swan Green is among John Boyne's top ten stories with a youthful protagonist.

--Marshal Zeringue