As a general rule, first novels don't stray too far from their authors' lives. There's a natural tendency to begin by explaining what one has experienced firsthand, not always successfully. Exceptions aside –Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Nothing of Carmen Laforet either The watchman in the rye field of J.D. Salinger– these first contributions to literature do not usually have much literary interest because writers are not born, they are made.