The Worst Years of Your Life: Stories for the Geeked-Out, Angst-Ridden, Lust-Addled, and Deeply Misunderstood Adolescent in All of Us

Sometimes sad, often poignant and always painfully honest, the stories in this fiction anthology do away with the rose-colored glasses that grown-ups often employ to make memories of adolescence bearable, drawing them back into the bewildering fog of youth. Beyond a talented group of writers-including George Saunders, Jennifer Egan, Stacey Richter, A.M. Homes and Nathan Englander-author and editor Poirier has gathered a happily diverse set of sad-sack stories. Julie Orringer produces a ""Note to Sixth-Grade Self,"" in which she advises an awkward 12-year-old how to get through excruciating dance classes (""Do not think about Zachary Booth's hand warts""); Mark Poirier contributes the story of an unhappy boy whose compulsive lies hide an unspeakable secret; and Amber Dermont posits a convincing tale of a teenage girl learning to understand her abhorrent mother. For adult readers, this rich, candid collection is bound to stir memories of their own growing pains, and more than a few words of thanks that they're in the past; for those in the thick of it, these stories will, if nothing else, take a little of the sting out of teenage loneliness and confusion.