Megan did a piece on teenage friendship in novels for the Guardian and it set us off on trying to remember books that dealt with that subject.
Phil picked A SEPARATE PEACE (which was a uneasy friendship to my mind). My choice would be BIRDY by William Wharton. Both male friendships. It was harder to come up with an adult book that portrayed a female friendship between adolescents other than a new one IN ZANESVILLE by Joanne Beard, which I haven't yet read and Megan's new book, of course.
What books or stories about teenage friendship stand out for you? Hard to think of them, isn't it?
27 comments:
That's a tough one, all right. I'll go with the first book or story that comes to my mind. HARDY BOYS! Teenage detectives Frank and Joe Hardy and their best friend Chet Morton and the Bayport gang of Biff Hooper, Tony Prito, Jerry Gilroy... I read HB in school and realised what friends and friendships were all about. Now you got me thinking.
I've been reading a lot of young adult fiction lately and you might try Scott Westerfeld's Midnighters series, Rachel Caine's Morganville Vampires and (especially) John Marsden's Tomorrow series, set in rural Australia.
Jeff M.
I can come up with a lot in YA fiction, but so little in adult fiction.
I have high regard for Stephen King's THE BODY which became STAND BY ME as a movie.
His short stories are really great!
George beat me to it, but THE BODY came to mind instantly. You're right, though. Adult fiction is more likely to concern disaffected teens.
Peyton Place?
Birdy was great.
Boy's Life by Robert MacCammon.
The first I read, and still remember well, was the Hardy Boys books, with their best friend Chet.
After that, nothing much stands out. The only thing that came to mind was West Side Story.
Yes, McCammon's BOY'S LIFE and the somewhat similar - if more horror-oriented - SUMMER OF NIGHT by Dan Simmons.
Jeff M.
The one that immediately came to mind was The Quartzite Trip by William Hogan. I think someone did a Friday's Forgotten Books on it if you check the archives.
It was Bill Crider writing about it on his blog in May.
I want to say that warm, mutually supportive, noncompetitive friendship between males is pretty uncommon in fiction period. Maybe it lacks the dramatic tension needed in a narrative.
Female ones seem rare too. Usually at some point one girl steals the other's boyfriend.
Quartzite Trip. Will look for it.
Boy's Life reminded me of THIS BOY'S LIFE but that one was not about friends.
That was a great book too, Patti, though in a totally different way. It was harrowing to read.
Jeff M.
Ed Gorman wrote a really nice novella called MOONCHASERS though I can't remember if it was about teenage friends or brothers
If you read it in tandem with DUKE OF DECEPTION, it's incredible. What parents.
Thanks, Dan. You can't go wrong with Ed.
I did indeed read the two Wolff brothers' books in tandem. Overall I've read a lot more of Tobias, perhaps because he's written so many short stories.
Jeff M.
The first one I thought of was THE OUTSIDERS, by SE Hinton: Ponyboy and Johnny's friendship.
Hinton was good, wasn't she?
(Shaking head in disbelief at such blanket endorsements of King and Hinton): Well, it wasn't what you'd call a Healthy friendship, but LAST SUMMER by Evan Hunter (HEAVENLY CREATURES the film similarly). Though they were almost-adult teen and 20yo "girls", and a romance arose between them, SPRING FIRE by "Vin Packer"...
Both LAST SUMMER and HEAVENLY CREATURES deal with murderous teens. That King story is about my favorite of his and Hinton spoke to most teens of that era pretty effectively.
Leopold and Loeb could not be considered a healthy relationship either.
Yes...but King wrote other wonderful short work ("Mrs. Todd's Shortcut") and other incredibly inept short work ("The Cat from Hell," the "Gunslinger" stories); Hinton always bored me with her clumsiness when I was a young teen reader, not unlike the only slightly older Bret Easton Ellis when he started (and he never grew out of it).
Ah, but the girls in HEAVENLY CREATURES only became murderous when threatened with separation; and the kids in LAST SUMMER, aside from the victim, were tight (albeit poorly drawn in the typical Hunter fashion).
All swell movies, weren't they?
Well, HEAVENLY CREATURES was first-rate, at least...
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