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Saddest/Most Depressing Novel You've Ever Read

  • Thread starter Deleted member 6550
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Deleted member 6550

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So, I've covered just about every other genre in the literature world lately, so I'd really appreciate any recommendations regarding sad/depressing novels that you've read... and I mean sad. I want a BIG tear-jerker... as much so as possible.

Any help would be... err, helpful. ;)

:)
 
The diary of a superfluous man by Ivan Turgenev.

Its not really a big tear-jerker, but gives me a feeling i have not experienced from many other books.
 
What comes to my mind are 'Oryx and Crake' and 'The Lovely Bones'. 'Oryx and Crake' isn't exactly the tear-jerking kinda depressing. It just felt so tragic, got to me for awhile. For 'The Lovely Bones', it was a really sad and utterly depressing read until the weird possessing return.:eek:
 
You sound like my wife. Our reading tastes are rather different. She usually doesn't trust my recommendations — unless I mention that it's depressing! :D

Off the top of my head, The Grapes of Wrath, The Jungle, and Bastard Out of Carolina, stand out in my mind as pretty depressing.
 
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
 
The two most depressing books I have read are:

'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Bronte

'Endless Night' by Agatha Christie
 
Hmm, I didn't think The Rules of Attraction was very depressing. It's certainly not light reading but I didn't come away from it feeling sad. I actually thought the book was oddly humorous and bizarre. Having not read the book in a while and therefore having a flawed memory of it . . . what made you mention it in this thread?
 
Anamnesis said:
Hmm, I didn't think The Rules of Attraction was very depressing. It's certainly not light reading but I didn't come away from it feeling sad. I actually thought the book was oddly humorous and bizarre. Having not read the book in a while and therefore having a flawed memory of it . . . what made you mention it in this thread?
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It was depressing to read, in the opening chapters, of a girl being fucked, somewhat against her will, and painfully, by two guys while she's so high and drunk that she is unable to move.

I like Ellis, but this book had such a nihilstic feel to it that turned me off and depressed me.
 
The saddest part of a book for me had to have been when
Petya Rostov was killed
in Tolstoy's War and Peace.
 
Some of my answers are already here, but I'd add Hemingway--The Sun Also Rises, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. There are memoirs that have gotten to me, too: The Only Girl in the Car by Kathy Dobie, The Concubine's Children by Denise Chong and Sickened by Julie Gregory. Some parts of Michael Chabon's The Adventures of Cavalier and Clay made me bawl. Actually, I've cried during Harry Potter books....
 
I really enjoyed the pulitzer winner, Middlesex. Then I started Virgin Suicides by the same author. It was most depressing. Too depressing even to go any further. Stopped somewhere in the middle of it.

For a real tear jerker I finished: East of Eden by Steinbeck and Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
 
I remember crying loads as a kid when my mother read me a children's version of a story by Oscar Wilde (I think) - it's about a Swallow that stays with a statue into the winter and dies. I can't remember its name.
 
mcilroga said:
So, I've covered just about every other genre in the literature world lately, so I'd really appreciate any recommendations regarding sad/depressing novels that you've read... and I mean sad. I want a BIG tear-jerker... as much so as possible.
Any help would be... err, helpful. ;)
:)
Click to expand...

I felt extremely depressed reading "A fine balance" by Rohinton Mistry. The author was playing with the reader. One moment there is a hope, the next moment - craaachh! Something terrible happens. I was very, very sad.
 
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn didn't make me warm and fuzzy all over. Quite the opposite. It outlines, rather brutally, the daily life of a Soviet work camp/prison inmate. Great read nonetheless.
 
ewomack said:
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn didn't make me warm and fuzzy all over. Quite the opposite. It outlines, rather brutally, the daily life of a Soviet work camp/prison inmate. Great read nonetheless.
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You don't think it's an uplifting book then? Harsh and unremitting maybe, but ultimately the message is that whatever the system throws at the 'Zeks' it can never entirely crush the human spirit. Somewhere, someone will always retain that little vital spark. That's certainly the message that I get every time I read it (three times so far!).
 
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