Gay Coming-of-Age Books #4
Discover powerful gay coming-of-age stories in this curated book list. From Edmund White's classic *A Boy's Own Story* to Steve Kluger's heartfelt *Almost Like Being in Love*, explore essential LGBTQ+ fiction and juvenile tales of identity, love, and self-discovery.
Book
Almost Like Being in Love
by Steve Kluger
A high school jock and nerd fall in love senior year, only to part after an amazing summer of discovery to attend their respective colleges. They keep in touch at first, but then slowly drift apart. Flash forward twenty years. Travis and Craig both have great lives, careers, and loves. But something is missing .... Travis is the first to figure it out. He's still in love with Craig, and come what may, he's going after the boy who captured his heart, even if it means forsaking his job, making a fool of himself, and entering the great unknown. Told in narrative, letters, checklists, and more, this is the must-read novel for anyone who's wondered what ever happened to that first great love.
Book
Lucky
by Eddie De Oliveira
Offers readers a coming-of-age tale about a young boy trying to deal with his feelings of attraction to both girls and boys while dealing with a new friendship that has the possibility of turning into something more. Original.
Book
Embrace
by Mark Behr
EMBRACE is the story of the awakening of Karl De Man a thirteen-year-old student at the Berg, an exclusive academy for boys in South Africa in the 1970s. Interwoven with the storyline about Karl at school are memories from Karl's childhood and first years at the Berg, presented as an ever-growing patchwork of the many influences on his development: growing up on a game reserve in East Africa, intensely aware of landscape and wildlife; a loving and close family, but a traditional one that will never easily accept Karl's true self: being sent away to school and the formation of new friendships and relationships. But, after threats and punishments handed out after casual sexual games in the dorm, Karl falls in love. He simultaneously has secret affairs with his best friend, Dominic, who is the son of liberal parents, and his choirmaster, Jacques Cilliers. The great strength of the novel is that it places Karl's passions on a wider canvas, focusing on his raw passions and elemental drives against the landscapes of Africa. It is a staggering follow-up to Mark Behr's award-winning first novel, THE SMELL OF APPLES.
Book
A Boy's Own Story
by Edmund White
At home, in school, and on the streets, a homosexual teenager growing up in the 1950s moves through comic sexual experiments, isolation, fear, and exciting expectations toward an escape from childhood and a firm sense of self, in this classic coming-of-age novel. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.
Book
Edinburgh
by Alexander Chee
A gifted Korean-American man confronts the terrors of his past as an adult when he confronts the molestation he suffered at the hands of his choir director.
