1. The Anatomy of Wings, by Karen Foxlee
This book is definitely a heartbreaker. It’s set in a small Australian town in the 1980s and told from the perspective of a ten-year-old girl named Jenny who is struggling to cope with the aftermath of her older sister Beth’s suicide. Foxlee’s poetic descriptions of the novel’s setting are breathtakingly beautiful, and the setting almost develops into another character within the novel. The Anatomy of Wings tells the story of Beth’s troubling and heart-wrenching transformation from being a pre-teen to a teenage girl who desperately wants to fit in, her family’s attempt to aid her, and Jenny’s perspective. Foxlee’s novel honestly confronts and investigates the challenges associated with being a teenage girl. Her characters are completely believable, and her story highlights the importance and fragility of family ties. It also provides the reader with an opportunity to honestly perceive how a family may cope with the aftermath of a teen suicide, and has a delightfully hopeful ending.
2. Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery
I’ve read Anne of Green Gables more times than I can remember, but I still love it. Anne of Green Gables is the first novel in a series by Canadian writer L.M Montgomery that focuses on the life of Anne Shirley. It begins with an imaginative eleven-year-old orphan named Anne Shirley arriving at Green Gables, Prince Edward Island from Nova Scotia in the 1890s. The only problem is that Green Gables is a home inhabited by an elderly brother and sister, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, who know next to nothing about raising a child and had intended to adopt an orphan boy to help with the running of their farm. Anne of Green Gables documents Anne’s transformation into a capable, confident and intelligent young woman making friends, excelling academically and finding out who she is in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
3. Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This book won the National Book Critics Circle Fiction award in 2013. It revolves around the lives of two characters, Ifemelu and Obinze. They fall in love as teenagers in Lagos, Nigeria, but Ifemelu soon leaves to attend university in the United States. Americanah documents Ifemelu’s relationships, as well as experiences with racism and realizing what it means to be perceived as black within the US. It additionally focuses on Obinze’s life journey. He is denied entry into the US after 9/11, moves to London, England, and then eventually returns to Nigeria to become a wealthy property developer. Years later, Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, and her and Obinze consider if their relationship will be able to continue. This book is beautifully-written, and Ifemelu and Obinze are truly lovable and relatable characters. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie considers the essence of the human experience. Americanah is a consideration of love, racism and the challenges that stem from being immersed in an unfamiliar culture.
4. The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd
There’s a buzz about The Secret Life of Bees, and with good reason. It’s a heartwarming story about family, race, bees and female friendship set in the American south in 1964. Sue Monk Kidd’s heroine, fourteen-year-old Lily Owens, runs away from her abusive father with the family’s black maid Rosaleen after Rosaleen pours snuff juice on three white men’s shoes. They eventually make it to Tiburon within South Carolina, and meet the Boatwright sisters. The Boatwright sisters, August, May and June, are black women who keep bees and sell honey. Lily’s time with August, May and June helps her recognize that she can learn much about life from honeybees. It also helps her grow closer to her dead mother, as the sisters knew her mother when she was alive.
5. The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, by Heather O’Neill
Heather O’Neill’s The Girl Who Was Saturday Night tells the story of what it is to be nineteen turning twenty through Nouschka Tremblay and her twin brother Nicolas. Nouschka and Nicolas Tremblay live in Montreal with their grandfather Loulou, and are the children of well-known Quebecois singer, Etienne Tremblay. Heather O’Neill perfectly captures the lure of wanting to leave home, and yet being pulled back to it once difficulties arise through Nouschka’s relationship with Raphael, the love of her life. She also sets her novel in Montreal in the midst of the 1995 Quebec referendum, and mirrors the potential for the separation of Quebec from Canada with potential disintegration of relationships characters have with one another.
Happy reading!