Coming of age is an evergreen theme in literature for young readers. From Mark Twain’s titular scamp coming to appreciate the personhood of his companion, Jim, in Huckleberry Finn to Marjane Satrapi struggling to reconcile cultural demands with her emerging sense of self in Persepolis, stories about the transition from the innocence of youth to the experience of adulthood have a special resonance for an audience with feet in both worlds. A clutch of recent Kirkus-starred Indie titles demonstrates the elasticity of the genre—the same basic beats can be played with endless variations in style and tone.
The Queen of Steeplechase Park by David Ciminello chronicles the early years of Bella Donato, an irrepressible teen in 1930s Coney Island whose lust for life—reflected most vividly in her love of food and sex—practically reverberates off the page. Whether biting nuns as a tyke or finding her tribe among circus folk and other assorted misfits as a teen, Bella’s energetic presence makes her an indelible character…and an unusually earthy one for the often anodyne coming-of-age genre. Our reviewer calls Bella’s story “a delightful read” and notes that “the energy and emotional pitch of the story start high and never let up.” Many stories about growing up touch tragedy; Bella’s tale is one of pure joy.
David Brendan Hopes’ The Falls of the Wyona sensitively portrays the burgeoning love between two teenage boys in small-town North Carolina in the 1940s—a most inhospitable setting for gay relationships to flourish. Homophobia begets outrage and violence as the characters navigate the already treacherous terrain of young love, but the book’s tone is more elegiac than tragic, and the bond that develops between the two protagonists feels achingly real as they banter, hang out, and fumble toward intimacy. Our reviewer praises Hopes’ prose as “intense and evocative,” imbuing the narrative with “mordant lyricism.”
Set in the late 1960s, Randall Northcutt’s The Cusser Club recalls such nostalgic classics of the genre as Stephen King’s The Body (the basis for one of cinema’s most reliable tearjerkers, Stand By Me), as it follows the misadventures of a group of embattled teens in nowheresville Dix Knob, Texas. Northcutt’s tale gets dark—the plot includes bullying, sexual abuse, mental illness, attempted suicide, and murder—but the novel’s affirmation of the power of friendship and the characters’ determination to do the right thing in difficult situations ultimately shine through. Our reviewer notes, “it’s Northcutt’s clear, confident voice and his ability to immerse the reader in 1969 culture that makes this novel so readable.”
Also dark, but more sardonically so, The Beads by David McConnell traces the evolution of two New Jersey boys throughout the 1980s and ’90s after enduring toxic home lives and abuse. Darius, the odder of the two, is obsessed with the incestuous Borgia family—this gives a fair indication of McConnell’s darkly comic sensibility, in which (per our reviewer) families are depicted as “snake-pits of subtle power plays, rich men as unbalanced, and social life as an awkward struggle to paper cheerful good manners over fear, resentment, and boredom.” How do any of us make it through?
Arthur Smith is an Indie Editor.
