I think The Mezzanine might be a coming of age novel...
...Or at least a unique subversion of one. While main characters in coming-of-age novels are usually teenagers, Howie is in his mid-twenties. Still pretty young, but not quite as young as the typical young hero of a story. However, a large focus of the book is definitely Howie’s maturing. In chapter 7, we learn about the “morning of [his] adulthood” when he was twenty-three (49). He describes this morning on which he discovered how to apply deodorant without taking off his shirt. Despite the fact that this mundane, strange memory is the one that defined his coming of age, the story Howie tells is a coming-of-age story. A few pages later, he reflects on this maturity. He is “the sort of person who stood in a subway car and thought about buttering toast…who said ‘actually’ too much.” He “was a man, but…not nearly the magnitude of man [he] had hoped [he] might be” (54). This bittersweet reflection on maturing and still not feeling quite mature is very coming-of-age style, presenting the r...