Archive for the ‘Coming-of-Age’ Category
THE CAT’S TABLE by Michael Ondaatje
In his new novel, THE CAT’S TABLE, Michael Ondaatje imagines a young boy’s three-week sea voyage across the oceans, from his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) to England. The eleven-year-old travels alone and is, not surprisingly, allocated to the “lowly” Cat’s Table, where he joins an odd assortment of adults and two other boys of similar age.
October 7, 2011
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Judi Clark · 
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Tags: Adventure, biographical, Knopf, Literary · Posted in: Coming-of-Age, Contemporary, Literary, Real People Fiction, Time Period Fiction
CHILD WONDER by Roy Jacobsen
Navigating that shaky bridge between childhood and adulthood is never easy, particularly in 1961 – a time when “men became boys and housewives women,” a year when Yuri Gargarin is poised to conquer space and when the world is on the cusp of change.
Into this moment of time, Norwegian author Roy Jacobsen shines a laser light on young Finn and his mother Gerd, who live in the projects of Oslo. Fate has not been kind to them: Gerd’s husband, a crane operator, divorced her and then died in an accident, leaving the family in a financially precarious position. To make ends meet, she works in a shoe store and runs an ad for a lodger for extra money.
September 28, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 1960s, Around-the-World, Graywolf, Oslo, Scandinavian · Posted in: Award Winning Author, Coming-of-Age, Family Matters, Life's Moments, Norway, Time Period Fiction, Translated, Uncategorized, World Literature
WE THE ANIMALS by Justin Torres
WE THE ANIMALS in this wonderful debut novel refers to three brothers, close in age, growing up in upstate New York. They are the Three Musketeers bound strongly together not just because of geographical isolation but because of cultural separateness too. The brothers are born to a white mother and a Puerto Rican father—they are half-breeds confused about their identity and constrained by desperate and mind-numbing poverty.
September 22, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: brothers, Contemporary, Domestic Violence, Family Matters, Gay/Lesbian, lyrical, Poverty · Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Coming-of-Age, Contemporary, Family Matters, Identity, Latin American, NE & New York
MAKEDA by Randall Robinson
MAKEDA is the title character of Randall Robinson’s astounding, thought provoking, and highly engaging novel. A blind retired “laundress,” Makeda’s life is anchored in her tiny, often sun-filled, parlour in Richmond, Virginia. Her modest circumstances, after a life of hardship, stand in stark contrast to her appearance and demeanor: at home, at church and in the market, she is usually clad in richly embroidered beautiful African gowns and she radiates wisdom and emotional strength, instilling respect wherever she goes. Some unknown visitors leave gifts for her, or speak to her as if she were somebody else…
September 11, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 1950s, 1960s, 2011 PB Release, Africa, love · Posted in: Africa, Coming-of-Age, Family Matters, Identity, Literary, Spiritual, US South
THE GLASS DEMON by Helen Grant
“I didn’t believe in demons; I ranked them with ghosts and vampires and werewolves, as products of a fevered imagination, or phenomena with a perfectly rational explanation. I did not realize yet, that summer when I was seventeen and my sister Polly was still alive, when the sun was shining and even the wind was warm and my whole body was restless, that there are worse things than being stuck in a small town for a year. There are demons, and they are more terrible than we can imagine.”
August 27, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: Demons, Speculative (Beyond Reality) · Posted in: Coming-of-Age, Germany, Gothic, Mystery/Suspense, Psychological Suspense, Speculative (Beyond Reality)
THE TYPIST by Michael Knight
Only those who fully venerate war can think of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as a glorified event. Indeed, many fictional books that are set in post-Hiroshima reconstruction are filled with vivid, colorful and poignant descriptions.
So it comes as a surprise that Michael Knight’s THE TYPIST is such a gentle book. It is devoid of precisely what one might expect in a book set in the wake of World War II: no brow-beating, no heart-wrenching, no intrusive authorial political statements.
August 9, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 1940s, 2011 PB Release, Around-the-World, Historical, wwII · Posted in: Character Driven, Coming-of-Age, Japan, Literary, Time Period Fiction, War
