New Adult Fiction
The New Adult fiction genre attempts to capture the ups and downs of transitioning into adulthood. In a general sense, it is a time to start “adulting” and when challenged to start making the hard choices about the direction our life will take, the "quarter-life crisis" ensues. New Fiction’s popularity can be attributed to the increased interest of young people to read books that reflect their life experiences and that captures their attention. New Adult fiction has been criticized for being too similar to Young Adult fiction and has garnered a reputation as a trend that will soon die out, but the key difference is that “the heart of YA is the coming-of-age story about a teen’s first step towards deciding who they are and what they want to become. The coming-of-age story in New Adult is about actually becoming that person” (Brookeover, 2014).
New Adult Fiction shares many common themes with other adult fiction, yet these novels portray characters in the 18–25-year range and focus on issues important to those in this age group. It is imperative that coming-of-age stories reflect the experiences and emotional challenges of young people. It is likely that this trend will extend into other age groups, creating sub genres surrounding other major life events such as “Middle Age Lit” and “Empty Nester Lit” (Brookeover, 2014). I actually like the idea of subdividing material around important milestones in life. Reading about how characters navigate through common life experiences can be a major appeal factor for a reader.
The New Fiction genre has also gained a reputation for being Young Adult fiction with more sex. Maybe so. Librarians are not in the position to make judgements on what patrons read in general and I don’t believe that this genre is any different. Overall, it is important to have stories that reflect the true or imaginary lives of this demographic whether we like it or not.
As librarians it is important that we do not overlook the appeal that New Adult fiction has for adult readers. It is important for us to remain open to emerging genres and include the work in our collections. Familiarizing ourselves with authors and new titles is essential and should be part of our regular Readers' Advisory research. It is also important that adult service librarians be willing to cross over into Young Adult literature so we can understand the appeal of the genre to adult readers and therefore provide better readers' advisory service.
Overall, I believe librarians should support the emergence of sub genres that cater to the tastes of particular reading groups. It not only helps the reader identify and describe their reading interests, but it provides a refined vocabulary that librarians can use to better understand the appeal of a particular work.
Excellent summary and fantastic conclusion! Libraries should always be huge promoters and supporters of emerging genres. Full points!
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