novels i can’t believe were debuts

If you ever want to feel bad about yourself and what you’ve achieved, look up some authors and see how old they were when they wrote their successful books. Even worse if it was their debut.

Some debut novels have no business being as good and accomplished as they are. I’ve read many novels that I assumed were written by authors several years into their career, only to discover they were actually the author’s first book. And if the author was my age when they wrote/published it, or god forbid, younger than me, that sends me into a spiral.

These are some of the books I still can’t believe were debut novels:

The Secret History - Donna Tartt

If I had written this masterpiece as my first novel, forget only publishing a new book once every decade—I probably wouldn’t bother myself with writing anything else. Tartt started writing it when she was nineteen at Bennington College, finishing and publishing the novel when she was twenty eight. By that standard, I have about three years left to write and publish a modern classic, so I better get on that.

White Teeth - Zadie Smith

I was twenty four when I first read this novel, the same age Zadie Smith was when it was published (a fact that was very much on my mind while reading it). She started writing it when she was only nineteen to distract herself from the stress of university exams. When I was stressed about exams, I would curl into a ball and cry, not pen a multicultural family saga about immigration, identity, and the struggles of British assimilation. But we all have different coping mechanisms!

Less Than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis has admitted to essentially copying Joan Didion’s famous style of hazy, nihilistic writing in this novel. I appreciate his honesty, because as a child I wrote many stories on the family computer which were actually just thinly veiled imitations of my favourite books. Like Tartt, Easton Ellis wrote this while at Bennington and published it when he was twenty one to huge success, which is just rude.

(I definitely recommend the Once Upon A Time…at Bennington College podcast which digs into the context of Donna Tartt and Easton Ellis’ novels, and how they both became part of the 1980s ‘literary brat pack’. If only publishing was still that wild.)

The Girls - Emma Cline

To say it’s ambitious to make your debut novel a retelling of the Manson murders would be a huge understatement. But this novel also perfectly captures the tumultuous teenage girl experience and the toxicity of female friendships. It was one of the first books I read when I got back into reading, and it motivated me to create my BookTok/Bookstagram accounts just so I could talk about it with other people. Cline also got a $2 million advance for this novel. Not bad at all.

Conversations With Friends - Sally Rooney

Sometimes when you read a debut novel, you can tell it’s the author’s first book—the characters aren’t as developed as they could be, or the themes aren’t explored fully. But Conversations With Friends feels like such a masterful, intricate book that I actually thought it was Rooney’s sophomore novel when I first read it. I’m not surprised there was a seven-way bidding war to publish it.

Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng

The first line of this book deserves to be on one of my ‘best opening lines’ lists. While Little Fires Everywhere is probably my favourite Ng novel and her most accomplished, the way Ng explores how unresolved regrets and grief shape the dynamics of a family is so well done here. It really is literary fiction excellence.

The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides

Many writers dream of writing a book with such cultural impact, though of course having a film adaptation directed by Sofia Coppola helps. The exploration of the male gaze through the Greek chorus narrator is undoubtedly one of the most striking parts of this book. Somehow Eugenides demonstrates the despair of a teenage girl, encapsulated by the youngest sister, Cecilia, who, when told she is too young to understand how hard life can be, simply replies, ‘Clearly, Doctor, you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.’. It’s angsty, of course, but also realistic.

My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russell

This is one of those books I always say I want to re-read, but I actually don’t think I could go through that again. Being inside Vanessa’s head as she realises that years of grooming have warped her into thinking that her abuse was love is so devastating. This is truly one of the most harrowing books I’ve read, yet I still highly recommend it.

Are there any debut books that surprised you? Have you read any of these? Any other debuts you’d recommend? Leave a comment and let me know!

Leave a comment