I think that summer is the perfect time to read coming-of-age novels (my past summers on this blog were all about such books as The Interestings, Golden Child, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, and Arturo’s Island), and below is my personal list of ten great coming-of-age novels (a Bildungsroman). Summer is usually linked to childhood and growing up (at least in my mind): the sense of freedom after school is over, grass picnics and summer camps. Charles Dickens (David Copperfield), Mark Twain (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer), J. D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye), and Louisa May Alcott (Little Women) are just a few of the authors I used to read who all wrote about the pains of growing up and finding oneself in the world, capturing that curious transition between the magical world of childhood and the “harsh” world of adults, that is full of responsibilities. The list below includes my other old favourites and more-or-less-recently-discovered modern classics.

I. The Little Friend [2002]

by Donna Tartt

The focus of this evocative novel by Donna Tartt is twelve-year-old Harriet Dufresnes living in Mississippi who becomes obsessed with tracking down the murderer of her brother Robin twelve years prior. Her passion for justice leads her on the progressively dangerous journey of confronting the town’s criminals and the people she believes are responsible for her brother’s death. Tartt fuses the southern mystery with the wonder and investigative adventures of childhood tainted by trauma and thrown in at the deep end.