Most bitter novel ?

[spiltteeth]

I feel the books of Michel Houellebecq are pretty bitter. Any others ?

[kev67]

The bitterest book that I have read recently was The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. New Grub Street had its bitter moments.

[chrisvia]

Céline and Roth always convey bitterness to me. My experience with Houellebecq is interesting. I've read all but the latest (La carte et le territoire), and the emotion seems to vacillate between bitterness, discontent, hope, detachment, indifference, nihilism. Well, that's not entirely true--I read the first 100pp of his latest, on a plane back to US from France, but I kept falling asleep (late night of escargot, fromage, et du vin!).

[sandy14]

Any novel by Bukowski.

Houellebecq's Atomised & Platform

James Thomson's The City of Dreadful Night - not a novel, but a narrative poem.

[mona amon]

Jude The Obscure. Half the time it seems like a bitter attack on marriage.

[ennison]

Death of a Hero by Aldington - very good and quite vinegary. Strangely I found Tressell/ Noonan/ Crocker's novel realistic rather than bitter but daft in his supposed cure for the proles tough life. Even when I read it as a young prole.