"Life on loan". Erich Maria Remarque
A man, his car, a frail girl, dying of tuberculosis. The heroine spends all the money on Balenciaga dresses, and the hero really wants to believe in the best. The ironic and absurd finale turns this sentimental story upside down. If you believe in the dubious thesis that every girl at 17 must read Remarque, then let it be "Life loan".
"Portrait of Dorian Gray". Oscar Wilde
A beautiful and capricious young man Dorian does not want to grow old. Talented artist Basil writes his portrait and, without knowing it, literally transfers his soul to the canvas. Now Dorian is forever young, and the portrait grows old instead of him. A beautiful mystical novel about the naive selfishness of the young, about the immorality of beauty and how it is really scary to never change.
"Lord of the Flies". William Golding
An eerie book about the entertainment of English schoolchildren on an uninhabited island. Little boys live the opposite evolution, turning, from civilized children into evil, wild animals, cultivating fear and strength, capable of killing. The story of freedom, which implies responsibility, and the fact that youth and innocence are not synonymous.
"The Night is Tender". Francis Scott Fitzgerald
Expensive cars, villas on the Cote d'Azur, silk dresses - but there is no happiness. The love triangle with the participation of a doctor named Dick, his young neurotic wife Nicole and the young frivolous actress Rosemary is the main novel about love, strength and weakness.
"Slaughterhouse number 5". Kurt Vonnegut
The subtitle of the novel - "The Crusade of Children" - is the most correct definition of the Second World War. This is a war that the children went to - 17-year-old boys with missing brains. The protagonist makes an endless movement in time, remembering his senseless and not heroic campaign against the World evil. In this book about the war - not a single battle scene. Only the stupidity and absurdity of the whole idea of a young man's eyes.
Lolita. Vladimir Nabokov
One can argue endlessly about what it was - a filthy perversion or pure feeling, provocation or confession. It does not matter. Read this book about the relationship between the forty-year-old Humbert and his thirteen-year-old step-daughter is at least to understand why we all sometimes behave so strangely when dealing with older men.
"Clockwork Orange". Anthony Burgess
The rebellious, cult, brutal and very teenage book. It's worth reading when you're 16, or not worth reading at all. The main character is a young man Alex, a bully, a sadist and an eerie monster rapes, kills, speaks in strange slang and unexpectedly transforms into a respectable citizen, an employee of a music archive. Logic is not present, there is only a miracle, but quite explainable - Берджесс started to write the novel, thinking, that will die, and has finished, already knowing, that the deadly diagnosis was a mistake.
"Easy breathing". Ivan Bunin
An important story about the schoolgirl Olya Meshcherskaya, femininity and first sex, an enamored officer and a shot at the station. "Easy breathing" - this is an important quality of girls, which makes men go crazy with love, and the young ladies themselves - it is unforgivably frivolous to treat their own lives.
"Transformation". Franz Kafka
Kafka is a difficult and gloomy writer. A young girl to love him is not easy. But you should try. Novella "Transformation" - an absurdist pamphlet on the theme of human loneliness. The young traveling salesman Gregor wakes up one fine morning with a disgusting centipede, a cockroach, a beetle, a filthy muck that his family is afraid to look at. If you leave aside the modernist pranks of the author, you understand that this is all about life, about the illusory nature of love, about the ugliness and loneliness of everyone.
"French Lieutenant's Mistress". John Fowles
Every day on the seashore is a young woman in black and looks at the horizon. The woman's name is Sarah and there is a rumor that she is waiting for her savior-lover-sailor to dishonor her. A young man is going to marry a young charming girl. But one day sees a woman in black, and everything goes awry. Will he marry or give vent to feelings? You will decide. Brilliant Fowles wrote two versions of the finale to show that conscience is an individual choice.
"Dear friend". Guy De Maupassant
A classic French novel with an "anti-hero" in the title role. Young journalist Georges Duroy tries to make his way in Paris. He is mediocre, greedy, cowardly and illiterate. But very beautiful. A terrible story about how smart and talented women are victims of their own blindness. This novel is an inoculation from stories with gigolos for life.
"Alice in Wonderland". Lewis Carroll
A great fairy tale dedicated to a little girl, a familiar author. "Lolita" without any signs of sex. "Alice" is useful to re-read in the adult state in order to develop imagination, an unexpected view of things and a sense of humor.
