20th birthday present for my friend

[Veva]

Hi guys,
my best friend's birthday is approaching and I was thinking, of course, about giving her a book, besides some other stuff... and I would like to hear any suggestions. Last year I gave her Murahami's Sputnik Sweetheart and she said that she liked it {I hope she meaned it} and she has been a little lost recently, I guess that she is searching for herself. She is still a teenager for some part, but an adult in other.
Can you suggest something good with a main character who tries to find his identity? She already knows the most famous classics so I cannot go for that...
thanks a lot

[The Comedian]

Have you ever thought about a graphic novel? Craig Thompson's Blankets may be just the thing. It deal with identity, youth, and many other themes in an intelligent and heart-felt way. Plus the art and writing are of the highest quality.

[Virgil]

How about The Sun Also Rises by Earnest Hemingway?

Edit: Oh wait, you said she knows the classics. Try All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.

[Veva]

How about The Sun Also Rises by Earnest Hemingway?

I am sure she has already read that

[Virgil]

I am sure she has already read that

Veva as you were responding I edited my post. Look back up.

[Veva]

Veva as you were responding I edited my post. Look back up.

sorry..but All the pretty horses is a good suggestion :)

[Dark Muse]

Hmm most the identity seeking books I know or have read are classics, but it is getting late for my thinking factualities to work properly, so I will get back to you if I think of anything good, and not as well known.

[myrna22]

Hi guys,
my best friend's birthday is approaching and I was thinking, of course, about giving her a book, besides some other stuff... and I would like to hear any suggestions. Last year I gave her Murahami's Sputnik Sweetheart and she said that she liked it {I hope she meaned it} and she has been a little lost recently, I guess that she is searching for herself. She is still a teenager for some part, but an adult in other.
Can you suggest something good with a main character who tries to find his identity? She already knows the most famous classics so I cannot go for that...
thanks a lot

So when you say she 'knows the most famous classics' what does that mean? Has she read all of Jane Austen? Has she read Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy? Tess of the D'Ubervilles? I don't know what you mean by most famous. Has she read The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton? The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers is a wonderful book about feeling lost, teenage angst type stuff, but it is not a children's book. The narrator is a teenager, but the themes are very much for the adult world. In fact, if she doesn't know this book, sounds like it might be about the right thing for someone teetering between teenage and adulthood and still searching for herself.

[Dark Muse]

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen is a wonderful book about a girls searching for her own idenity

Also a more modern book, but very well written and interesting with a quite engaging story that tells the story of a trio of characters, a girl, her brother and her mother, all struggling to find themselves when they don't quite fit in with the rest of soceity, Private Altars by Kate Moss

[myrna22]

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen is a wonderful book about a girls searching for her own idenity

Also a more modern book, but very well written and interesting with a quite engaging story that tells the story of a trio of characters, a girl, her brother and her mother, all struggling to find themselves when they don't quite fit in with the rest of soceity, Private Altars by Kate Moss

I agree with The Death of the Heart. Would be a good choice.

[thelastmohican]

I presume she has read "Catcher in the Rye"? Although, being female, I don't know just how much she'd identify with the main character.

[Nax]

The Stand by Steven King

Although the central plot is of the post apocolypse, almost every single character struggles with life prior to the end, and then who they must become, or who they can now become after the apocolypse.

Overall a good read anyways