Showing results for "Open" in Coming of Age

Chloe Seager creates a fun yet thought-provoking novel about two very different women, Holly and Fliss, who are grappling with drastic changes in their relationships after Holly’s boyfriend wants to “open” their relationship and Fliss’s boyfriend wants to “close” theirs. After nine...

Jerra and his best mate Sean set off in a beaten-up old VW to go camping on the coast. Jerra's friends and family want to know when he will finish university, when he will find a girl. But they don't understand about Sean's mother, Jewel, or the bush or the fish with the pearl. They think he needs a job, but what Jerra is searching for is more elusive. Only the sea, and perhaps the old man who lives in a shack beside it, can help.

Set in the spring, summer and fall of 1952, it's an entertaining and oft-hilarious coming-of-age tale told by an engaging 19-year-old New Jersey gas-station mechanic named Buddy Palumbo, whom several reviewers have likened to Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye. Buddy's a true working-class hero whose mean-spirited, bullying father is a union shop steward at a big chemical plant in Newark, and he wants Buddy to work there, too. But Buddy hates the place, and really wants to hang around the corner gas station—Finzio's Sinclair in Passaic—and learn how to fix cars.

I rediscovered a bit of myself in Jun-li, and in May-lee Chai's beautifully constructed and perfectly contained world. It's the deftly and subtly rendered intricacies that mark this story, link it to the experience of Asians in America, and linger in the imagination. Julie Shigekuni, author of A Bridge Between Us, In Plain View, and Invisible Gardens When you are eleven years old, is there anything more humiliating, or bound to cause a fight, than shopping with your mother when your body is in full-throttle warp? Yes, there is: picking out the school-required underwear.

Circletown is a strange place, and everyone knows it. People often get lost on well-traveled roads and familiar streets. Maps are useless. Henry is a kid at Circletown Elementary School. Henry is a little strange. He only eats a few things, like milk and white bread. His life changes when his dad suddenly leaves. Henry's mom, Dr. Berniece Baker, needs to work, and gets Henry a babysitter. But Corey Turnbridge is not just any babysitter. She's a top athlete and she fascinates Henry. Henry tags along to her side job at Jet Café.