I just finished The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky and I did not find it depressing at all. The book that made me most depressed because I did not really get the point of it was The Castle by Franz Kaffka. The Remains of the Day is poignant and I think beautifully and hauntingly sad.
There's a desparately sad play, but plays aren't allowed
Agree with The House of Mirth. Not so sure about Sister Carrie.
I'd like to add Maggie: A Girl of the Streets as both sad and depressing
I found A Portrait of a Lady very sad as well as McTeague by Frank Norris. not necessarily tear jerkers but sad none the less.
The Jungle is depressing on so many levels.
No damn cat, no damn cradle - Newt Honniker
Yes Maggie a Girl of the Streets was quite sad. I just recently finnished reading Three Lives by Stein, and all of those stories (there were 3 of them) were all very sad. And for me it felt as if each story became progressively more depressing.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ~ Edgar Allan Poe
Why not? Three Sisters by Tchekov was probably the saddest play I'd ever seen or read.Originally Posted by kelby_lake
There's a desparately sad play, but plays aren't allowed
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore is chokingly sad, and Christina Stead's Man who loved children is depressing beyond words. Both brilliantly written though.
The Catcher in the Rye always leaves me feeling a little depressed. But for me, in the field of sheer nihilistic, relentless misery, Joseph Heller's Something Happened takes some beating.
"The Jungle" was pretty sad. Such things do happen someplaces in the world, though maybe not in contemporary America.
The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill. I haven't even read it but the synopsis made me almost cry.
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt was a pretty big downer.
Er, may I share short story? It made me cry when I first read it when I was a kid and it still made me cry when I read it years after. It's "The Little Mermaid".
The saddest novel I've ever read would have to be "The Dream of The Red Mansions". I cried a lot, I was depressed for around three months because of this unforgettable tragedy. It still haunts me to this very day. Whenever I think of it, it makes me sad.
Oh, and I'd like to add "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" by Victor Hugo although it has lots of witty lines and humorous scenes.
And also Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein". I even cried after watching the movie!
Night ~ Elie Wiesel...fantastic book though...just depressing and sad....
"It's so mysterious, the land of tears."
Chapter 7, The Little Prince ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
It's another Anderson story that makes me cry: The little Matchstick Girl... and Oscar's Wilde's terribly sentimental "The Nightingale and the Rose": buckets.
If I may distinguish between sad and depressing.
I still to this day cannot read about Tiny Tim in "A Christmas Carol" without blubbing. Thats sad!( In more ways than one.)
A Thousand Splendid Suns, on the other hand, is just depressing,
Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
There is a scene that I cannot describe out loud without crying. A young girl, perhaps 15, lifts up her gown and asks an old man if he would kiss her breasts. She does not want to die without having had a man kiss her breasts.
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