Books for adults with a child protagonist?

[ShelfObsessed]

I'm trying to find books on this topic for a book group. I first thought of They Came Like Swallows which I loved but it's about a pandemic and I want to avoid that. Most people have already read The Kite Runner and Room. Half have read Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. Some have read David Copperfield.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

TIA

Demon Copperhead

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Life of Pi

Little Women

Roald Dahl eg Matilda, Charlie, etc

Never let me go, Kazuo Ishiguro
The particular sadness of lemon cake, Aimee Bender

Nutshell by Ian McEwan - the narrator is a foetus!

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.
Each chapter is told through the voice of one of the 4 daughters in the family.

Thanks all. I really appreciate the suggestions and these all sound like great picks.

We Have always Lived In The Castle
Secret Life Of Bees
To Kill A Mockingbird
Let the Right One In
My Family And Other Animals
We Begin At The End has a central character who is teenage
Sal - bit tough in places due to subject matter
Bilgewater is funny but she's a bit old maybe. Can't recall if it starts with her as a child
Paddy Clarke HaHaHa
The Bluest Eye is, I think
Go Tell It On The Mountain

This tender land William Kent Kreuger

@ShelfObsessed be interested to know what you go for and how it goes down with everyone. Always on the lookout for these types of books and will be checking out the other suggestions on here.

All the Light we cannot see
The Book Thief

The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

The Northern Lights by Philip Pullman, people may have read it as children but it's good to revisit as an adult.

Shuggie Bain, Pine

When We Were Romans by Matthew Kneale,
Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud,
Frost in May by Antonia White,
The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West,
No Talking after Lights by Angela Lambert.

Five quarters of the orange

The Lovely Bones
The Little House on the Prairie series

A lot of Stephen King’s stuff is often partially narrated by a child or seen from a child’s perspective

Philip Pullman's Northern Lights books. To me the themes are quite complex and I'm unsure why they are sewn as children's books.

The Little Friend- Donna Tartt

Little Gold by Allie Rogers

Life after Life (Kate Atkinson)? The narrator is repeatedly a child for much of the book

How about A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson. Much of the story told through the eyes of Clara, whose older sister has disappeared. Great evocation of small town American life.

Small Country, by Gaël Faye
Pine, by Francine Toon
Fight Night, by Miriam Toews
The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
Nervous Conditions, by Tsitsi Dangarembga
Tin Drum, by Günter Grass
The Dictionary of Lost Words, by Pip WIlliams

It's apparently a children's book, I suppose because the language is simple, and it's short, but The Blue Book of Nebo by Manon Stefan Ros. The most beautiful book I've read in years.
It's not pandemic, but is post-apocalyptic though. Although overall I'd say that it's positive and heartwarming, there's definitely a fair amount of tragedy too.

My book group did a similar theme a few years ago; IIRC there was a bit of a split between parents and non-parents over all the books we read and how much the realism/believability of the child portrayal mattered😁

Not mentioned so far:
O, Caledonia, Elspeth Barker
The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen
Flavia de Luce series, Alan Bradley
Our Endless Numbered Days, Claire Fuller
The Go-Between, L.P. Hartley
Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, Maria Semple
Random Acts of Senseless Violence, Jack Womack

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