Required Reading: 10 Devastatingly Sad Books

flavorwire.com:

We’re the first to admit that, sometimes, the best cure for a hard week, a long day or just a rainy weekend is a really sad book.

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Comments

[JDM73]

03:17 AM on 05/16/2011

Edith Wharton, "Ethan Frome"; Denton Welch, "A Voice Through a Cloud"; William S. Burroughs Jr., "Cursed from Birth" (edited and compiled by David Ohle).

[frankenheimer]

09:31 AM on 05/15/2011

A Fine Balance should be on this list.

[westphilly726]

09:55 PM on 05/14/2011

Nordies at Noon

[Galia Hannah]

01:21 PM on 05/14/2011

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy--so sad, heartbreaking.

[Grouchette]

07:20 PM on 05/13/2011

Bridge to Terabithia is a real tearjerker.

[suzee]

05:04 PM on 05/13/2011

The Bridges of Madison County......or any story dealing with star-crossed lovers.

[signgrrl]

02:24 PM on 05/13/2011

calvin trillin's book about his wife, alice

[Baileygk]

12:13 PM on 05/13/2011

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin actually made my boyfriend cry out loud.

[John Dav Redux]

07:41 PM on 05/13/2011

Horrible book. So cheesy and contrived I laughed.

[Baileygk]

12:55 PM on 05/27/2011

you seem to not like anything. Are you just a complainer?

[IowaGirl]

10:33 AM on 05/13/2011

If you really want a good, cleansing cry, you must read A Dog of Flanders. It is the definitive "sad" book, tragic from start to weepy finish. It is deeply, shameless sentimental (about a poor young boy and his dog, need I say more).

While the books listed above are all good (have read most), I don't really consider them "sad," per se. The Didion book is way too distanced in feeling to provoke much sadness in most readers. Ditto Joyce Carol Oates' book about widowhood. Way too overwrought to make a reader actually feel sad. Worried about her mental health, yes.

[signgrrl]

02:26 PM on 05/13/2011

i don't know quite how to feel about didion's book. i never heard of that reaction before, but that's not to say it doesn't happen, just that people don't talk about it.

[c-tom]

01:55 AM on 05/13/2011

Science fiction fans can read Connie Willis' 'Passages'.

[mombabytiger]

12:24 AM on 05/13/2011

"Sophie's Choice". Read shortly after I had my second child - a girl.

[dclayanderson]

06:10 PM on 05/12/2011

The Road is a great book.

[FoxIslander]

01:03 PM on 05/13/2011

...loved that book...the last 50 pages are tough to read.

[kareemachan]

05:25 PM on 05/12/2011

Love, love, love 'Islands in the Stream', and still remember the kick in the stomach after reading the end of the first part of the book.

[Blodo]

04:52 PM on 05/12/2011

Gotta say that I can't agree with the inclusion of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go. It was not sad, just really bad. The premise was so ridiculous, I could barely finish it. Don't want to provide any spoilers, but simply try to conceive of modern society actually entering into any serious debate about whether certain thinking, breathing, walking, talking individuals have souls or not, and you will get my drift.

[Becca Heiser]

12:59 PM on 05/13/2011

The crux of Never Let Me Go is based on the awareness/understanding of the Japanese idea of honne and tatamae-- honne is what truly is, tatamae is what we share/present/acknowledge publicly. If you think about it in those terms, it's pretty devastating.

[Blodo]

10:59 PM on 05/13/2011

Interesting. But he wrote the book in English, for an English audience, so without being familiar beforehand with the Japanese cultural connection, the book just didn't work for me. This isn't just him, either. A number of writers have ventured into speculative fiction without really understanding the genre or how to develop cohesion. (Doris Lessing comes to mind.) On the other hand, his Remains of the Day was simply awesome.

[naschkatze]

04:41 PM on 05/12/2011

A little known Scottish classic, Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. Not well known here, but I cried through the last third of the book at least.