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Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, it has been on the NY Timesbestseller list. Does that qualify as good literature? Anyway, it was quite depressing even with a "happy" ending. Deals with the modern woman's issues of family verses work and divorce and independence. Many people like the book, but just left me feeling empty.
I don't know if it's the saddest I've ever read, but I just re-read The Pearl by John Steinbeck the other day. That is extremely depressing. Especially if you have a baby
I just read The Kite Runner... I haven't cried this much over a book in as long as I can remember. It is unbelievably depressing. It hurts as you read it. I sit here now, and am not sure if I can really move on....
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Originally Posted by PoeticPassions
ya, i agree. It's depressing, though i don't remember myself crying over the book.:)
The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy. Now I never read McCarthy unless I have a couple of days to be depressed afterward.
Dostoyevsky and Zola really get to me, especially the former. I admittingly am a hard-head and rarely feel depressed or cry when reading melodramatic stories (though there are always exceptions). I do, on the other hand, find stories of utter bleakness to be terribly depressing. Not in the way that one would cry, but in which one would simply feel empty and devoid of meaning. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and End Game are examples of this (especially the latter). Upon first reading them, I wasn't all that depressed and in fact was more overcome by the comedic wordplay of the former, than the existential themes it embodied. I read it again, and was haunted. End Game especially. There is just something so bleak about that single confined room. The unseen post-Apocolayptic landscape. The absurdly comic parents in trash-cans. Such a great, hilarious and depressing play.
(Btw the two quotes in my signature are from the two plays)
I've read in a reliable source that their are over 200 KNOWN cases of youths killing themselves because of the affects of the novel.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fellow
The Catcher in the Rye. Easily.
Mystic River definitely. One of the most unrelentingly bleak books I've ever read. The movie is very sad as well (terrific acting!), but the book just adds more depth to Dave's character. Love it, though. I need to read more Lehane if his other books were like this.
One can be moved by a sad novel such as Goodbye Mr. Chips, but not necessarily depressed. I would say that to be depressed by a story or novel, one would have to be in that state or close to it before reading something which depresses you. The normal person can be made sad, but not depressed by the written word.
Poor Folk by fyodor dostoevsky
Desolation Row by Jack Kerouac
The Confessions of Max Tivoli. I cried my eyes out by the end.
juvenile short read: A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Someone mentioned Ender's Game. Really? It's dark, but I never found it too depressing.
My vote goes to Of Mice and Men. I don't know what's sadder, the movie or the book.
I think the saddest book I've read is Flowers For Algernon, but the most depressing book is 1984.
1984 is a good one.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy) and The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen).
Wethuring Heights by Bronte
Of Mice and Men - specilly the ending when George tells Lennie the story of the bright future together that they will never share...and then...
Tess - most depressing character to whom things just happen.Quote:
Originally Posted by Garrick
The catcher in the Rye - depressing because it's just a load of teen anxt rubbish for which I had such high expectations. (I was a late teen when I read it).
I agree- this was very sad, but it makes me want to read more of Dostoevsky- he is a wonderfully compassionate and smart writer. Notes from Underground was sad because of the ending. He chased after the girl, but it was too late when he changed his mind. Dostoevsky had a lot of insight into to mentally ill due to living next to a mental institution. He liked to visit the patients, and he treated them with respect. He also had a tragic life himself. I'd like to read something, but I won't read Crime and Punishment.Quote:
Originally Posted by virginiawang
I must say Chinhua Achebe's 'Things Fall Apart'. British imperialism was bad but you never know how bad until you read a novel like that. Did you all know that the British smashed President Barak Obama's grandfather's testicles with iron bars when they imprisoned him in Kenya? It's no wonder our president sent back the bust of the warpig Churchill that was defiling the White House. It was Churchill who authorized that brutality.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
It is a fiction related to some history on Nazi
The realism of their situation is very heartbreaking and sad
It is quite modernalised and i reccommend it very much
it is happy in some parts too ;))
The Road, by McCarthy. It has to be the single most depressing novel I have ever read. I also found it utterly pointless. I usually get something out of every good book I read, but I took nothing from this, except a burning hope that if an asteroid ever strikes earth it takes me with it.
Although Hardy has the bleaker world view, I would say Conrad is the more depressing. No matter how great the writer, their personality colours the prose. Conrad was not a happy man, and it shows. There is a dark, gloomy, clinically depressed presence looming over (or under or behind) his novels.
I also find Evelyn Waugh a bit depressing. His prose is sublime and he is very, very funny, yet there is a coldness, a lack of empathy and feeling, which borders on sadism.
As an antidote I would suggest P G Wodehouse.
I agree about the ending. It is also not in the least believeable: the son wanders straight into the arms of a kind and protective family. The reality, as any reader knows, is that he would have starved to death or fallen into the hands of one of the roaming gangs of cannibals.Quote:
Originally Posted by crazefest456
There has been much discussion of The Road on this forum and I have come to the same conclusion. It seems a pointless story that I have no intention of reading. As for Waugh, he was terribly cut up about his wife leaving him for another man and this coloured his writing to the extent that he includes a similar event in 'A Handful of Dust' and 'Sword of Honour' but that he is the funniest writer in English literature is hardly to be doubted. If there are doubts then a reading of 'Scoop' will dispel them.Quote:
Originally Posted by WICKES
Of mice and men- Steinbeck
I would not recommend it. He writes beautifully and it is a very believeable depiction of what life would be like should there ever be a collapse of civilization. But it is one of the few novels I have taken nothing from. With most good books (and it is very good) I will put a pencil mark around particular passages and then return to them. With The Road I didn't feel that urge at all. In fact I gave the book to a charity shop once I had done with it. It makes Hardy and Conrad seem life-affirming. I know people will say "but you've misunderstood it. It is supposed to be life-affirming. The little boy retains a humanity and compassion in spite of everything". Yes, the child is well-drawn and loveable. But the darkness overpowers everything. Ashes and darkness are all that linger in my mind. Bleak, bleak stuff.Quote:
Originally Posted by Emil Miller
I love Evelyn Waugh. In fact his prose seems pretty much close to perfection. I also think Decline and Fall is the funniest novel I have ever read. But I doubt his wife's infidelity is responsible for that streak of cold, sadistic inhumanity in his novels. Waugh was quite simply a nasty little man with virtually no empathy. He takes real pleasure in killing off his characters in horrific ways.
This book is on my TBR list. But as you say it's bleak enough, I won't spend my money on it. Will borrow it from the library.Quote:
Originally Posted by WICKES
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak is a very sad read.
If this is a Man by Primo Levi. But also Notes from Underground and Death of Ivan Ilyich. All fantastic books, but all very sad.
Any tragedy by Shakespeare (in particular King Lear). Toni Morrison's Sula. the Bell Jar by Plath.
Also - a book that needs a special mention - Candide by Voltaire - the plot is really, really, really sad yet he uses a somewhat comedic tone. Black comedy I suppose
And - i forgot to mention - ANY BOOK by William Styron - they will literally dampen even the most optimist person in the world
The Hunchback of Notre Dame! Why have normal deaths when you can have horrible sadistic ones? And why not call the final chapter the most deceptive title ever?
I didn't cry but The Book Thief. A very sweet novel.
One that made me cry but I wouldn't necessarily call it depressing was a Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
I did bawl my eyes out years ago when I read The Bridges of Madison County. Also, Lullabies for Little Criminals.
One that is not a novel but I found to be super depressing and paranoid for months I had cancer was Gilda Radners It's always Something. Also on Borrowed Time, an AIDS memoir. Beautifully written but oh so depressing.
Could not agree more.Quote:
Originally Posted by WICKES
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Originally Posted by WICKES
I have read three Joseph Conrad books: The Secret Agent, Lord Jim and The Heart of Darkness. They were all miserable. The Heart of Darkness was actually a short story in a collection of three. The other two short stories were miserable too.
Actually, I liked "The Road." I understand what you all are saying about the ending, but I don't really have any problem with that. With a book that deals with such a bleak topic, you have to have a smidgen of hope to leaven it. After all, hope is what gets us out of bed in the morning.
There's something ineffably sad about My Ántonia. Aside from the fact that Jim and Ántonia don't end up together, which is pretty obvious from beginning. There's just something in the book's undercurrent, something beneath its surface.
The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad
Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The other two novellas that came with Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Daisy Miller - Henry James
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
Here's a few:
Farewell to Arms - Hemingway
Maya - Jostein Gaardner
Breakfast of Champions - Vonnegut
A Happy Death - Camus
The works of Virginia Woolf. There's a certain brittleness inherent in the works of Virginia Woolf that calls for a little caution as if she's at the point of breaking into little pieces of glass. Her short fictions included.
1984, Wuthering Heights, Tess of D'Urbervilles and Atonement are really depressing, but I don't remember crying. I was just disappointed and depressed. Time-Traveler's Wife and A Thousand Splendid Suns were really sad too. Hans Christian Andersen's stories like The Little Match Girl and The Little Mermaid are real tear-jerkers.
The one book which has made me cry the most for the past couple of years was Mockingjay, the last book of the Hunger Games trilogy. It's really sad, so much death and destruction.
I cry very easily when I read or watch movies, but I don't think that simply shedding a few tears makes a book particularly sad and/or depressing. For example, I cry every time I read Jane Eyre, but I still don't think it's all that depressing, because the ending is happy enough. It's more to do with the ending and the overall feeling. I don't mind crying a lot in the middle if there's at least a little bit of happiness at the end, but I don't like thoroughly miserable stories with no hope at all.
I love Vonnegut, the wandering nature of his works gets to you, but they tie in together at the end of his works typically.Quote:
Originally Posted by bookowskee