Kristopher Jansma’s debut novel, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards explored the competition and jealousy of two close friends during their formative years. His latest novel, Why We Came to the City, dives into the complications of a group of friends as their relationships mature, and perhaps even, outgrow each other. He was joined by Isaac Fitzgerald, books editor at BuzzFeed, to discuss the novel at Community Bookstore in Brooklyn.

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The Center for Fiction brought Gabriel Roth and Kristopher Jansma together for a discussion of coming of age stories. Both Jansma’s The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards and Roth’s The Unknowns feature protagonists in their twenties coming to terms with adulthood. Roth qualifies this point by saying of his protagonist that “he completely fails to come of age,” and in a way, his novel is about the failure to mature.

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