|
|
Sad Titles for Teens
Return to Fiction_L Booklists Menu
December 2011
Compiled by Irene Hill
of the Fraser Valley Regional Library, from contributions by the members of Fiction_L.
(To use this list in your library, book club, etc., please include the following credit line: "Compiled by the subscribers of the Fiction_L mailing list." This list may not be used for commercial purposes.)
Barbery, Muriel The Elegance of the Hedgehog. We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renee, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renee is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants, who for their part are barely aware of her existence.
Brashares, Ann Sisterhood Everlasting. It's the fifth Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants book, but unlike the others, this one was published as adult fiction, and it takes place 10 years after the last book in the series. Without spoilers (I think): something awful happens to one of the women, and the sisterhood tries to get past it, but of course they all have their own lives and live all over the world at this point.
Burnett, Allison Undiscovered Gyrl. Only on the internet can you have so many friends and be so lonely.
Beautiful, wild, funny, and lost, Katie Kampenfelt is taking a year off before college to find her passion. Ambitious in her own way, Katie intends to do more than just smoke weed with her boyfriend, Rory, and work at the bookstore. She plans to seduce Dan, a thirty-two-year-old film professor.
Katie chronicles her adventures in an anonymous blog, telling strangers her innermost desires, shames, and thrills. But when Dan stops taking her calls, when her alcoholic father suffers a terrible fall, and when she finds herself drawn into a dangerous new relationship, Katie's fearless narrative begins to crack, and dark pieces of her past emerge.
Sexually frank, often heartbreaking, and bursting with devilish humor, Undiscovered Gyrl is an extraordinarily accomplished novel of identity, voyeurism, and deceit.
Chaon, Dan Await Your Reply. The lives of three strangers interconnect in unforeseen ways and with unexpected consequences in acclaimed author Dan Chaon's gripping, brilliantly written new novel. Longing to get on with his life, Miles Cheshire nevertheless can't stop searching for his troubled twin brother, Hayden, who has been missing for ten years. Hayden has covered his tracks skillfully, moving stealthily from place to place, managing along the way to hold down various jobs and seem, to the people he meets, entirely normal. But some version of the truth is always concealed. A few days after graduating from high school, Lucy Lattimore sneaks away from the small town of Pompey, Ohio, with her charismatic former history teacher. They arrive in Nebraska, in the middle of nowhere, at a long-deserted motel next to a dried-up reservoir, to figure out the next move on their path to a new life. But soon Lucy begins to feel quietly uneasy. My whole life is a lie, thinks Ryan Schuyler, who has recently learned some shocking news. In response, he walks off the Northwestern University campus, hops on a bus, and breaks loose from his existence, which suddenly seems abstract and tenuous. Presumed dead, Ryan decides to remake himself through unconventional and precarious means. Await Your Reply is a literary masterwork with the momentum of a thriller, an unforgettable novel in which pasts are invented and reinvented and the future is both seductively uncharted and perilously unmoored.
Guest, Judith Ordinary People. Comes immediately to mind. It might be a bit dated, but wow, talk about a family that masks sadness.
Henderson, Susan Up from the Blue. Would be good too. It would probably appeal to your teen too, since the main character is younger and very accessible.
Koppleman, Amy A Mouthful of Air. Very much an adult title -but was a vivid portrait of a woman dealing with dreadful post-partum depression, and trying to hide it.
Pouncey, Maggie The Perfect Reader. The main character is dealing with the unexpected death of her father and the sudden responsibilities _of being his literary executor. Synopsis
|
|
