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Thread: Saddest/Most Depressing Novel You've Ever Read

  1. #31
    Registered User HailStorm's Avatar
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    I remember Stienbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" made me cry and now I'm reading
    "The Time Traveler's Wife" Audrey Niffenegger. I'm almost finished but I know it isn't going to get any better. It's a clever book and there were times it made me laugh but, I'll finish it this evening, there's a new box of tissues at the ready.

    Oh Zybahn thank you.... I do like "don't read while shaving" that made me laugh

  2. #32
    Registered User thegreenthing's Avatar
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    Besides the Idiot, i find crime and punishment by Dostoyevsky quite depressing (on hte other hand he's generaly pretty depressing).
    I think 1984 by Orwell is actually the most depressing book i've read. People were actually asking me if I was well, it realy hit me.

  3. #33
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    Germinal by Zola. Read it and cut your wrists to cheer yourself up.

  4. #34
    The Poetic Warrior Dark Muse's Avatar
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    One of the most heart wrenching novels I have read was The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, out of all the many books I have read, this one really stuck with me and really pulled at my heart strings, and I am not the kind of person often given to being affected in such ways.

    Also I though Druids by Mrogan Llywelyn was pretty sad.

    And The Feast of All Siants by Anne Rice

    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

  5. #35
    Yes! crazefest456's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by thegreenthing View Post
    Besides the Idiot, i find crime and punishment by Dostoyevsky quite depressing (on hte other hand he's generaly pretty depressing).
    I think 1984 by Orwell is actually the most depressing book i've read. People were actually asking me if I was well, it realy hit me.
    Yup, definitely Crime and Punishment for me... I bawled at the ending...
    And 1984, after I finished reading (around 1 in the morning probably) I put my blanket over my head and just fell asleep--I mean, I was so emotionally exhausted because of that book, and then the last line, "I love Big Brother" was just the icing, to the proverbial cake.

  6. #36
    The Poetic Warrior Dark Muse's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by crazefest456 View Post
    Yup, definitely Crime and Punishment for me... I bawled at the ending...
    And 1984, after I finished reading (around 1 in the morning probably) I put my blanket over my head and just fell asleep--I mean, I was so emotionally exhausted because of that book, and then the last line, "I love Big Brother" was just the icing, to the proverbial cake.
    That was quite chilling, and indeed that was an emotional book and the ending was rather sad.

    Another book that pulled at my heart strings a little bit was The House Of Mirth by Edith Wharton

    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

  7. #37
    Cloudsplitter LoveToFreeRead's Avatar
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    Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser. I remember riding the NYC subway unable to stop the tears.

    This is a good thread. I love the sad and will try to read some of the books on this list starting with The Idiot.

    There is no such thing as defeat in non-violence. Cesar Chavez

  8. #38
    The Poetic Warrior Dark Muse's Avatar
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    I just thought of another one that I read sometime back and nearly forgot about, but it was really quite a good book I think.

    The Dress Lodger By Sheri Holman.

    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

  9. #39
    Fingertips of Fury B-Mental's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Daniel A. C. View Post
    Recently read Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", and I must say that on the bleakness level, it blows all these other books out of the water.

    It is dark, and all the more so because it is simply and straight-forwardly bleak, not fashionably dark, like a vampire novel or cyberpunk, etc. It is about the end of the world in a sense, and seems like this might be how it would actually happen.

    The ending is quite touching.
    Ok, The Road is bleak, but numbing and just plain old blah. I would never recommend it to anyone. I love the fact that Oprah recommended it...does she even read?

    Depressing? Doctor Zhivago by Pasternak...Yuri has his idealism torn from him piece by torturous piece. One of the saddest books I've read.
    "I am glad to learn my friend that you had not yet submitted yourself to any of the mouldy laws of Literature."
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    "My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends - It gives a lovely light"
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  10. #40
    Yes! crazefest456's Avatar
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    I loved the way The Road was written but I think McCarthy could've done better with the ending...It seemed less bleak and more cute because of the father and the son; I would start forgetting that it's post-apocalypse..

  11. #41
    Registered User Fowles27's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by LoveToFreeRead View Post
    Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser. I remember riding the NYC subway unable to stop the tears.
    I'll second that. Dreiser was truly gifted in writing a depressing piece. His American Tragedy does justice to its title.
    Besides Dreiser's works, I found Native Son by R. Wright to be a very saddening story.

  12. #42
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    The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by carson mccullers.

  13. #43
    Registered User ivette's Avatar
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    I admit that I almost cried at the end of Gone with the wind.
    The Bell jar by Sylvia Plath and Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse were also quite depressing at some moments.

    The end of Crime and Punishment was quite sad, but still not that much as some of you say.
    "All that lives must die,
    Passing through nature to eternity. "


    (Shakespeare, Hamlet, ACT I Scene 2 )

  14. #44
    Registered User liberal viewer's Avatar
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    Too many!

    Some of them:
    The counterfeiters by Andre Gide
    Light in August by Faulkner
    Most of Emile Zola's novels
    Despair by Coetzee
    the list goes on and on!

  15. #45
    Will Dance for Books
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    "Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Kundera is a tear-jerker, especially with all the death in it. "Sophie's Choice," too.

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