Ten Back to School Novels for Grownups

It’s back to school time. Now that the children are back in class you have more time to crack open a book. Check out these back to school reads that will remind you of being back in class.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kathy looks back on her childhood in an exclusive boarding school in the English countryside. The innocent memories of childhood hide a sinister truth about the future of the students at the school who are constantly remained by their teachers about how special they are. As a young woman Kathy’s childhood friends Ruth and Tommy reappear in her life. I enjoyed this book tremendously. You can read my review here.

 

On Beauty by Zadie Smith

On Beauty is a witty novel that focuses on the lives of two college professors and their families. Howard Belsey is a white Englishman who teaches at a liberal college in the fictional town of Wellington Masschuettes. He lives with is black Floridan wife, Kiki, and their two children. Their marriage has had their ups and downs and they are struggling to hold things together.

The Kipps family is a Trinidadian family living in England. The father, Monty, is also a college professor. Unlike the Belseys the Kipps are very conservative and Christian. Throughout the book, the two families’ lives become increasingly intertwined.

 

The Highest Frontier by Joan Slonczewski

Frontera is the elite school of the future dedicated to educating the worlds very best. Jennifer Ramos Kennedy is from an influential family suffering from loss who is starting her freshman year at Frontera. Jenny is eager to forget about the problems on an Earth ravished by climate change and have a normal college experience: dating and hanging out with friends. Jenny starts to notice that things are amiss at her college and has to step forward to help save the world.

Prep: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld

Lured in by the pictures of attractive teenagers in the brochure, Lee Fiora decides to attend a fancy boarding school. She is a smart fourteen-year old who soon realizes that as a scholarship kid she doesn’t exactly fit in with the wealthy students at the school. She observes them carefully and eventually, she learns their slang and rituals well enough to fit in with the group. No matter how hard she tries and how well she seems to fit in she always feels like an outsider. Lee’s behavior starts to take a self-destructive turn completely destroying the identity she works so hard to build for herself at the school.

 

Falling Together: A Novel by Marisa de los Santos

Pen, Will, and Cat met during their first year of college and cultivated a wonderful friendship that affected each of them well into adulthood. Even though they let their friendship drift apart they long to contact with each other again. On day Pen gets a desperate email from her old friend Cat asking her to meet at their college reunion. Pen goes and what transpires there send the reunited friends on a journey across the world that will change everything.

 

 

 

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

A group of smart outcasts at a prestigious New England college discover a new way of living and thinking that makes their lives more interesting. Influenced by a classics professor they pursue this new way of living until it leads them to overstep common moral bounties sending them down a path of betrayal and obsession.

 

 

 

Jam on the Vine by LaShonda Katrice Barnett

Ivoe is the daughter of a cook and a metalsmith who first realizes she loves the written word when she sees newspapers at her parents’ white employer’s house. She snags them whenever she gets the chance and gets lost in the articles she reads. She decides she wants to become a journalist and eventually gets accepted to a college to study journalism. When she returns home she realizes that her education doesn’t matter in the Jim Crow south. Ivoe flees to the north where she meets up with an old professor who has started the first newspaper run by African-American women. Ivoe works as a journalist risking her life to call attention to the injustices African-Americans faced in the segregated south.

 

 

Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Portia Nathan is an admissions officer at Princeton University. She’s spent who whole life hiding behind her busy job and her reliable home life. When a life-changing decision from her past comes back to haunt her she is forced to confront the reality of her life. While students wait for her to make the life altering decision about whether or not they’ll get into Princeton, Portia is forced to make an admission of her own.

 

 

 

 

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

Binti is the first of her people to attend Oomza University, the best learning institution in the galaxy. In order to go to the university, she would have to travel far away from her people and live among people of a foreign culture who practice customs that were different from her own. In order to get to the school, she would have to travel close to an alien race who has been at war with Oomza University putting her in harm’s way. If Binti wants to survive this legacy of a war, she will require the the gifts of her people and the knowledge within the University, but first she has to make it there … alive.

 

 

 

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

Jason Fitger teaches creative writing at a liberal arts college in the midwest. The university is drastically cutting funds from his department while they build lavish new offices for the economics department. His writing career in the dumps and his relationships leave much to be desired. The story of Jason Figer’s life is told in a series of witty, passive-aggressive letters that he is forced to write.