Jump to content

Asexual Coming of Age Books


Recommended Posts

I really love this genre of books, and usually there are a couple genres that overlap in this sort of literature. My favorite book in this area right now is 'Perks of Being a Wallflower' by Stephen Chbosky (my friend recommended it to me because she said I reminded her of Charlie, the main character). I highly suggest reading this book by the way :) .

I enjoy reading about all the experiences that the characters in question go through (some of which I missed out on during high school, usually that ones that could potentially get you into trouble :P ). I even don't mind reading the sexual parts because when I read I become the character and can empathize with most of what they're feeling, and this makes me feel like I'm almost feeling their emotions when I read the book. However, I really don't understand when it comes to the sexual parts even if I feel like I do, and am curious about whether or not there are any books like this from an asexual's point of view (I wouldn't mind trying to write one myself, I think I would like writing in that sort of style).

Any and all suggestions would be great. ^_^ For the moderator of this board, I didn't really know where to post this and decided that this was the best spot. If I'm wrong you are free to move it.

P.S. I did look in the bookshelves thread and couldn't really find exactly what I was looking for so I decided to make a specific thread.

EDIT

Suggestion List:

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You by Peter Cameron

Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman

Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't know of many ace coming-of-age books, but a good movie is Labyrinth. Nice in that Sarah chooses her friends and family over a stupid goblin king who's flipped between manipulative and outright threatening, which is not the way many of these stories end.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Gho St Ory Qwan

Great, I'm gonna watch the labyrinth now. =D Been needing a good film to watch. I'm gonna put this thread on watch and reply properly if I even come up with good suggests but as of now, no I haven't.

I'm in the process of writing several books, all with no sex in, they are a journey of years of someones life, but I'm not sure if it's a coming of age thing or not. Probably not, but I do like the idea of stories with no emphasis on it. Although forcibly omitting them when an author thinks it has importance is not good, so I'd still read regular ones.

I remember I read a lot as a kid and picked up and adventure story with a rape in it. I wish they had a warning on it. If they put ages on it (which is possible) it wouldn't have helped. I could read advanced things but at that age reading a rape is horrific... I've been adverse to sexual things in stories since so normally completely ignore them from that point on lol ^-^'

Link to post
Share on other sites
Gho St Ory Qwan

Oh can I have cake, I think the quote in your signature are from the book mentioned in your post no? (I need to fully read that.)

Link to post
Share on other sites
Asexy Existentialist

I don't know of many ace coming-of-age books, but a good movie is Labyrinth. Nice in that Sarah chooses her friends and family over a stupid goblin king who's flipped between manipulative and outright threatening, which is not the way many of these stories end.

I loooove this movie.

An interesting book to read is actually Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You by Peter Cameron. It just occured to me the other day that the main character could be asexual. It's a charming book, my favorite, and I've read it many times, so if anyone reads it I will be best friends with them instantly. :D

EDIT: I also remember reading a book by the author of Flowers in the Attic (V C Andrews) called My Dear Little Audrey or something. In it the main character was raped as a child and consequently forgot/repressed the memory, so she's afraid of sex and is traumatized by having to do it with her husband, who threatens to leave her if she doesn't start enjoying it. But you don't find out about the rape until the end, so reading it I was like "Yes! This character feels the way I do!" and then I was like "Oh, nevermind, it's because she's experienced trauma." But thinking back, a lot of books by that author featured rape scenes. Disturbing.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh can I have cake, I think the quote in your signature are from the book mentioned in your post no? (I need to fully read that.)

Ahh, yep :) . Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!! :cake: :cake: :cake:

I don't know of many ace coming-of-age books, but a good movie is Labyrinth. Nice in that Sarah chooses her friends and family over a stupid goblin king who's flipped between manipulative and outright threatening, which is not the way many of these stories end.

I haven't heard of this film before, it seems interesting though :) .

I loooove this movie.

An interesting book to read is actually Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You by Peter Cameron. It just occured to me the other day that the main character could be asexual. It's a charming book, my favorite, and I've read it many times, so if anyone reads it I will be best friends with them instantly. :D

EDIT: I also remember reading a book by the author of Flowers in the Attic (V C Andrews) called My Dear Little Audrey or something. In it the main character was raped as a child and consequently forgot/repressed the memory, so she's afraid of sex and is traumatized by having to do it with her husband, who threatens to leave her if she doesn't start enjoying it. But you don't find out about the rape until the end, so reading it I was like "Yes! This character feels the way I do!" and then I was like "Oh, nevermind, it's because she's experienced trauma." But thinking back, a lot of books by that author featured rape scenes. Disturbing.

Ah, more books to add to the list. Thanks for the recommendations :cake: . For your post edit, that's basically how I felt when reading Perks (made it even better that he had a similar thinking pattern), but then a few parts came up and I thought 'Darn it..'. We're close besides that, and I still love the book.

If anyone is interested, I also want to mention 'Looking for Alaska' by John Green. The author has a very modern writing style (it's good though :) ) , and he actually takes time to flesh out some of his side characters (which I think is great for a book of its size). There isn't really anything wrong with the main character trauma-wise, but it's a well written coming-of-age book.

Link to post
Share on other sites
asexual cake

As far as I'm aware, there aren't any explicitly asexual coming of age novels yet, but I, uh, am writing one.

Or rather, I'm writing a young adult novel in the great tradition of HOLY SHIT I'M GAY books, just with asexuality instead, leading to more cake, less sex, approximately the same amount of confusion, and generally a more comic - rather than panicked, tragic, or alienated - feeling.

~Read more here~

Link to post
Share on other sites

As far as I'm aware, there aren't any explicitly asexual coming of age novels yet, but I, uh, am writing one.

Or rather, I'm writing a young adult novel in the great tradition of HOLY SHIT I'M GAY books, just with asexuality instead, leading to more cake, less sex, approximately the same amount of confusion, and generally a more comic - rather than panicked, tragic, or alienated - feeling.

~Read more here~

Sounds exciting :D . I hope it goes well. I do want to make a suggestion though. I saw one of the responses at the end about making the character aromantic also. While I don't think it is fair to alienate some of the asexual population, there is also the other half, so...it'd be neat maybe if someone close to the main character was romantic or vice versa.

Link to post
Share on other sites

EDIT: I also remember reading a book by the author of Flowers in the Attic (V C Andrews) called My Dear Little Audrey or something. In it the main character was raped as a child and consequently forgot/repressed the memory, so she's afraid of sex and is traumatized by having to do it with her husband, who threatens to leave her if she doesn't start enjoying it. But you don't find out about the rape until the end, so reading it I was like "Yes! This character feels the way I do!" and then I was like "Oh, nevermind, it's because she's experienced trauma." But thinking back, a lot of books by that author featured rape scenes. Disturbing.

It's My Sweet Audrina.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Gho St Ory Qwan

The plan is, since I am making the main character aromantic (write what you know, etc. - and also as an opportunity to offer an aromantic asexual character outside of the vein of characters such as Sherlock or Sheldon), he's going to meet something who turns out to be geographically close to him who is a romantic asexual, for to represent ~everyone~.

This sounds promising. I'd love to read that. =D

I think to finally motivate myself I'll try seriously finishing my story ideas and see if anything has a consistent asexual representation. (I'm terrible with romance, its the least empathetic I get, so it'll probably be more like every character is asexual unfortunately.)

I'd be nice to read some others though and get a good perspective. (Still can't tell if I'm aromantic or not, so reading a story with two characters explicitly so would be very nice and refreshing.)

Good luck with your book. ^_^

*Runs off with cake*

Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't know of many ace coming-of-age books, but a good movie is Labyrinth. Nice in that Sarah chooses her friends and family over a stupid goblin king who's flipped between manipulative and outright threatening, which is not the way many of these stories end.

I watched the movie on Youtube a day (maybe) after you mentioned it, and it was really interesting, but a lot of the characters creep me out x_x . Sort of the same thing with Nightmare Before Christmas (not the two main characters and the mayor at least). With puppets or claymotion, and whatever technique was used in Nightmare, I can't really handle anything too grotesque.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Infinite Ruse

I recently picked up Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman, at the suggestion of another ace. The main character is asexual, apparently, and deals with it throughout segments of the book.

It also has something to do with wine as magic?

I haven't started reading it yet, obviously. The only bad thing I've heard about it is it drags a bit, and some people have issues with the way slavery was worked into the social structure of the world. But I'm curious to read it, anyway.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I recently picked up Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman, at the suggestion of another ace. The main character is asexual, apparently, and deals with it throughout segments of the book.

It also has something to do with wine as magic?

I haven't started reading it yet, obviously. The only bad thing I've heard about it is it drags a bit, and some people have issues with the way slavery was worked into the social structure of the world. But I'm curious to read it, anyway.

It does sound interesting from reading the synopsis. :)

Link to post
Share on other sites

An interesting book to read is actually Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You by Peter Cameron. It just occured to me the other day that the main character could be asexual. It's a charming book, my favorite, and I've read it many times, so if anyone reads it I will be best friends with them instantly. :D

HEY THERE NEW BEST FRIEND! :D

I was going to recommend this one, but you beat me to it. I'm fairly certain the main character is a homoromantic asexual. I seem to recall something about him saying he couldn't imagine ever having sex with anyone.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I recently picked up Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman, at the suggestion of another ace. The main character is asexual, apparently, and deals with it throughout segments of the book.

It also has something to do with wine as magic?

I haven't started reading it yet, obviously. The only bad thing I've heard about it is it drags a bit, and some people have issues with the way slavery was worked into the social structure of the world. But I'm curious to read it, anyway.

It's a decent book. I picked it up after seeing it being recommended by one of my favorite authors of all time. I'm... about halfway through it I want to say. To be honest I never picked up on the fact the character was Asexual, but then that might be because I started reading it before I was really fully aware of asexuality. I new it exist but only in the back of my mind from when I was 16.

I might have to reread it now from the beginning to see if I can pick up on that.

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 5 weeks later...

I don't know of many ace coming-of-age books, but a good movie is Labyrinth. Nice in that Sarah chooses her friends and family over a stupid goblin king who's flipped between manipulative and outright threatening, which is not the way many of these stories end.

Oh my god, David Bowie. XD That was a pretty good movie, actually.

As far as books go, I don't know any books (of any sort) that are told from the point of view of an asexual, or even mention asexuality. Can't really help you there.

However, I am writing a novel myself right now (I love to write, and this is the first idea for a novel that I think I'm actually going to stick with ^_^ ) which is about vampires. I love vampire books, but I think Twilight besmirched the name, and caused a bunch of cheesy teen vampire books to be written. So I thought I would take a swing at it and create a vampire that I like--and one that's completely free from sexuality. So, with any luck, I'll be able to stick with it and finish it, and I'll have a main character that is a vampire but also completely asexual. :) Not really coming-of-age, but the main character is an older teen, so I might end up including some of that kind of stuff.

It really sucks that there are so few books that have asexuality in them. :(

Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...