I'm not sure if that is what they are actually called but looking for suggestions on books that follow a main character through multiple life stages. Examples I'm going off of: Shes Come Undone, A Little Life, Go As A River. Bonus points for being devastating lol TIA!
by ApprehensivePair7113
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Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Betty by Tiffany McDaniel
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee! There are definitely some heartbreaking moments.
The Covenant of Water. Highly recommend.
a thousand splendid suns!!! my favorite book ever. follows mariam, an afghan girl/woman throughout her life. can’t say more than that without giving it away but it’s incredible.
The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne
The Goldfinch
**American War** by Omar Al Akkad is one of my fav books of all time. It follows a little girl from the American South through adulthood and death (and a little after). It takes place in an unspecified near future when climate change has pushed the continent to its habitable limits. The US is in the dregs of a second civil war, this time fought over fossil fuels. It’s still North v South, and just like the first war, the North has all the resources, but the South refuses to surrender. It’s just this yearslong checkmate punctuated by horrific acts by both sides. The main character begins the book as a happy (if dirt poor) sibling in a close knit family. But when the war comes to their door, and the family is placed into increasingly horrific circumstances, you begin to see the toll that takes on an impressionable child as they grow up surrounded by nothing but alternating boredom and terror. This story is as devastating as they come, but you’ll have many moments where you’ll wonder what choices you would have made in the same situations. I think it’s relevant to today as well, with wars in Ukraine and Gaza. What will *those* children grow up to do?
In a way…Life After Life by Kate Atkinson.
The most fun we ever had