Showing results for "memoir" in Coming of Age

When reading and writing are the most important things in the world. Jevick, the pepper merchant's son, has been raised on stories of Olondria, a distant land where books are as common as they are rare in his home - but which his mother calls the Ghost Country. When his father dies and Jevick takes his place on the yearly selling trip to Olondria, Jevick's life is as close to perfect as he can imagine. Just as he revels in Olondria's Rabelaisian Feast of Birds, he is pulled drastically off course and becomes haunted by the ghost of an illiterate young girl.

The second instalment of J. M. Coetzee's fictionalized 'memoir' explores a young man's struggle to experience life to its full intensity and transform it into art. The narrator of Youthhas long been plotting an escape - from the stifling love of his overbearing mother, a father whose failures haunt him, and what he is sure is an impending revolution in his native country of South Africa. Arriving at last in London in the 1960s, however, he finds neither poetry nor romance and instead begins a dark pilgrimage into adulthood.

Disenchanted with her personal life and faced with mounting career pressures, 39-year-old Michelle Black dreams of escape. But the high-octane finance professional and mother of two is ashamed to admit the depth of her struggles. Michelle’s frustration intensifies when her fumbling attempts to ask for help go unheeded. Then, work goes from bad to worse. Desperate to relieve the bleakness inside, Michelle turns to unspoken addictions and dangerous behaviors for a balm to her wounded soul. When the band-aids fail, what can she do next?

Follow the adventures of a baby boomer born in 1948 from his birth to high school graduation in 1966. Born in a small South Western Pennsylvania town on the edge of Appalachia, the narrator, in a fictional memoir filled with amusing anecdotes, captures life in an absorbing snapshot of coming of age in the Pennsylvania bituminous coalfields of the 1950s.

The story is about Sue, who started out living in a trailer with her uneducated, teenage parents in the backwoods in the 1960s. Moving out on her own at 15, she made "headline news" with record-breaking car sales in a man's world in the late '70s and '80s. Sue had to hang tough as the jealous men were sure she had slept with her customers to make so many car deals. The office women with college degrees resented giving a high school dropout pay checks exceeding their own.

The war took him away. Is their love strong enough to bring him home? From family tragedy, the war, to undying love, this compelling story spans three generations.

Take a trip back in time to the 80s when it was a great time to be alive. When Tommy and his 2 friends got drunk for the first time, playing air guitar to AC/DC, they knew their life would never be the same.

Set at a religious, liberal-arts university, Tabula Rasa tells a story of growing up, falling in and out of love, and forging bonds of friendship that have a lifelong effect. Told through the eyes of a young freshman named Troy Rollins, the novel is at once bitingly witty, frank, tragic, painful, but above all, hopeful. Troy begins his year at Ellis University as a blank slate: no ambition and no other desire than to finally be on his own and maybe be lucky enough to find a nice girlfriend. He is introduced to a wide variety of stimulating, albeit eccentric characters.

Eine etwas andere DDR-Geschichte: ironisch, rotzig, zärtlich. Mit tiefgründigem Humor erzählt Bastienne Voss von der Zeit mit ihrem Opa Gustav, dem "Oberirren mit dem KZ-Koller", und ihrer Oma Wilma. "Zuerst hatte ich einen Großvater, dann eine Großmutter und dann Eltern und alles andere, was so zum Leben gehört. Großvater hatte ein Ding zu laufen. Dass er sich das im KZ weggeholt hatte, wusste ich damals noch nicht. Jedenfalls ließ er an dem Ding, das er zu laufen hatte, alle teilhaben, und so hatte auch Großmutter bald ein Ding zu laufen. Bei mir wuchs das Ding von Jahr zu Jahr, bis es hier und da mein sogenanntes Normalverhalten überschattete. In unserer Familie hatten also mindestens drei Leute eine Macke: Opa, Oma und ich. 13 Jahre lang polterte Großvater durch mein Leben. 13 Jahre lang fürchtete ich mich vor dem Tyrannen und Wundertäter, den ich abgöttisch liebte."

When a big project at work goes south, Michelle Black finds herself in the CFO's crosshairs. Trapped in a world that's dictated by everyone else's rules and her own lies, Michelle's controlled mask shatters. Awake or asleep, long-buried memories rise up to re-traumatize her. Faced with the nightmarish prospect of returning to work after a ruinous family vacation, she finally finds the courage to ask for help.

The story follows James Murphy, who lives an extraordinarily unique life learning ordinary life lessons to which everyone can relate through his many misadventures. James' misadventures feature everything from swindling friends out of valuable baseball cards to run-ins with bullies and kids in Connecticut "gangs", from awkward romantic heartbreak to family party fiascos, from sophisticated pranks that build up to a court appearance and community service to a death defying "rafting" incident.