Coming of Age: How Adolescence Shapes Us by Lucy Foulkes review – deep dive into the teenage mind

An academic psychologist's insightful and compassionate study of adolescence is expertly presented, plotting out harmful as well as helpful transitions into adulthood

I had just emerged from my own teenage years when I first read Joan Didion's essay On Keeping a Notebook. Two sentences earned a mark in pen: I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4am of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends."

We grow estranged from our younger selves at our peril. This warning sits at the centre of Lucy Foulkes's excellent and insightful new book, Coming of Age: How Adolescence Shapes Us. Making space for the pain, mistakes and even trauma from the past is essential for our self-perception as adults, even if it may seem safer to edit them out. You also may miss the pleasure and fun of it too.