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Thirteen Years - Alfred Polly
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Alfred Polly 13

Outside the regions devastated by the school curriculum he was still intensely curious. He had cheerful phases of enterprise, and about thirteen he suddenly discovered reading and its joys. He began to read stories voraciously, and books of travel, provided they were also adventurous. He got these chiefly from the local institute, and he also ‘took in’ irregularly but thoroughly, one of those inspiring weeklies that dull people used to call ‘penny dreadfuls’, admirable weeklies crammed with imagination that the cheap boys’ ‘comics’ of today have replaced.

H.G. Wells  ·  The History of Mr Polly

13

Will Parker

The White Mountains

John Christopher

"‘You are small for it. So you will take the Cap next summer?’"

13

Victor Frankenstein

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

Mary Shelley

"When I was thirteen years of age we all went on a party of pleasure to the baths near Thonon..."

13

Timofey Pnin

Pnin

Vladimir Nabokov

"Do I really remember his crew cut, his puffy pale face, his red ears?"

13

Amory Blaine

This Side of Paradise

F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Amory became thirteen..."

13

Billy Bob

'Children on Their Birthdays'

Truman Capote

"...thirteen years old and crazy in love..."

13

Charles Highway

The Rachel Papers

Martin Amis

"I got bronchitis – absolutely spontaneously – at the age of thirteen..."

13

Peter Watson

'The Swan'

Roald Dahl

"He was a brilliant pupil, already in the senior class at school although he was only thirteen..."

13

Nelson Angstrom

Rabbit Redux

John Updike

"Nelson, at thirteen, is under average height, with his mother’s dark complexion..."

13

Joel Knox

Other Voices, Other Rooms

Truman Capote

"Now at thirteen Joel was nearer a knowledge of death than in any year to come..."

13

Adrian Albert Mole

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole  Aged 13 ¾ 

Sue Townsend

"It's time I fell in love, after all I am 13 ¾ years old..."