Coming of Age Stories

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I've never studied literature and I've never really understood the difference between "genre" fiction and "literary" fiction, (I may do a separate thread on this)

I understand that genre fiction is supposed to contain ideas or tropes that will be familiar to it's intended audience. It's therefore not considered very original.

However, I find that a lot of literary or general fiction contains very well worn ideas. The "coming of age" or "rites of passsage" story is one one that annoys me for some reason.

In it a child grows becomes an adult, usually because they have started having relationships. I find though, that these stories contain a lot of cliches for want of a better term. The adolescent is always stunningly handsome, almost always rich, always cool (in the most conventional sense) and having well educated or powerful parents. They usually live somewhere picturesque and the first object of their affection falls head over heals in love with them and promptly beds them.

I think these stories annoy me so much because, as Great Aunt Morrissey once sang "they say nothing to me about my life". I was a real outcast, and it was totally uncool and completely ****ing awful. I wasn't attractive or cool or rich and people didn't swoon over me, I'm guessing that on this site I wasn't alone in these experiences.

So, how do you feel about "coming of age" stories?

Have you found any that break the mould?

Is there any scope for a kind of "anti-coming of age story" (maybe in the form of a graphic novel) where the protagonist just doesn't go through the normal teenage dramas and then proceeds to drift through life, never fully becoming an adult (because that's what I think I'm doing)

I also can't read stories that don't relate to me. I was never popular, never rich, extremely shy, poor, pimply faced, nerdy, bullied and an outcast. When I went to college I hanged out with the punk rockers because they didn't care what I looked like.

I've read very few novels that I can relate to, though. I'm even gay but the gay styories I've read say nothing about me. They're always about middle or upper class very good looking dudes finding love with other middle or upper class dudes.

I once read a novel called "Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Turgenev. I though that was a good story. In a sense it's a coming of age novel but the young man was a nihilist so he was against the establishment. At least I can understand stand.

I also read "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. That wasn't a coming of age story but it was realistic in its depiction of class oppression, something I can definitely relate to.

You are looking for coming of age stories with overtones of aspieness? You might like Vernon God Little. It's about an intelligent high school student in a town full of cretins who is falsely accused of being involved in a school shooting because he was kind to the guy who ended up becoming the gunman. It won the Booker Prize.

I think the contempt with which genre fiction is regarded by many literary critics has more to do with snobbery than any deficiency in the works themselves. I find the themes and subtexts in most literary fiction I have read to be dull and lightweight compared to some of the better science fiction I have read.

It's more "coming of age" in the young adult sense rather than focusing on childhood, and it's nonfiction, but "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers is one of the very best books I've ever read in my life.

I read it several years ago so my memory is patchy on it, but it's basically about the author's parents both dying in unrelated incidents within months of one another when he was like 22, and him subsequently raising his ~7 year old brother while trying to figure his own life out.

Dave Eggers was pretty young when he wrote it and the "story" was basically still in progress at the time (I think he was in his mid-late 20s) and it is hysterical and down-to-earth on a level that I didn't even realize was possible.