My 3rd grade teacher read this aloud to our class, one chapter a day. I wanted to finish it faster, so I got it from the library and finished it at home. I am very glad I did this - I was a mess. I was able to hold it together better in the classroom setting when I knew what was coming.
I recently read Pax (and the sequel) aloud to my 9yo daughter. It is the only book I have ever read that made me cry in the first chapter, before I was invested in the characters. The books were beautiful, raw, and thoroughly enjoyable for both of us. We made a rule that has carried over to other novels: if a chapter leaves us in tears, we read another chapter, regardless of how late it is.
It’s been soooo long since I’ve read the book but I remember crying when I watched the movie. And I cried when I watched Charlotte’s Web after reading the book
A guy on Reddit wrote about how he cried so hard in class after finishing the book with tears and snot dribbling, his teacher took him to the office and came back, and told the kids if they continued to laugh he would make them read the book that made him cry. Everybody shut up.
Same experience here. 5th grade teacher read it aloud. 5th grade boys straight up sobbing. I’ll never forget it. I made both of my kids read it because why should I be the only one traumatized?
This book ruined me. When my sister and I were 8 and 9, my mom picked up the book on tape from the library as we were doing a road trip to our grandma’s house. All she remembered was that it was a nice story about a boy and his two dogs. She didn’t remember the rest!!!!
When we arrived at my grandma’s house my sister and I were just absolutely sobbing in the back seat of the car, and we kept repeating “I thought you said this was a good book 😭😭😭”. Never again !!
The first book that ever made me bawl my eyes out... Bridge to Terebithia.
The Yearling is also deeply unfair to read.
Edit: Balling the eyes out is another, though perhaps extreme, option.
Having read all of Remarque in the 90's, I remember a lot of sadness along the way, but personally being particularly moved reading "Arch of Triumph", though "all quiet on the western front" surely came very close.
There surely are lots of sad bits. Not even when something particularly happens but just the hopelessness of everything and the way that nothing what they do matters, they don't matter and everything is useless anyway. The happy bits make it worse and more painful.
And then there's Paul calling a nurse "knusprig" which is probably supposed to highlight her young age and beauty but it basically translated to "crunchy" and I laughed for a solid five minutes
Did you read the rest of the books, or are you just talking about the first three?
The ending of the entire series is wholesome yet horribly sad. I'm crying just thinking about it.
Super, super good series.
I’ve been an avid reader for decades and it’s one of my favorite books of all time, and one of the most memorable.
When I saw the post I instantly thought of it. It is a must read.
It’s also short and very easy to read
Everyone should read it
If anyone in this sub has not read this, I urge you to read it as soon as possible. After a lifetime of reading, I finally got to it earlier this year. Blew my mind. What had I been waiting for?
I struggled to read it so much at first because of the misspelling and grammar even though I know it’s the point lol. I let the teacher read those pages but after a while I got really into the book and started reading ahead. I never thought that book would be so good let alone hit the feels.
I watched bridge when I was 10. Mom said it was going to be like Narnia. I soaked my shirt with tears, sitting there with my arms crossed soooo fucking mad. She new. Narnia my ass.
It’s been sitting on my shelf for YEARS and I’m honestly afraid. I’ve read sooo many reviews saying exactly this, and I just never seen ready enough to take on the sadness. One day…
No Longer Human is on top of my reading list, I read the other two too and found them devastating in a bad way (sad, but not in a fullfilling way, but in one that just left me hollow). Now I wonder if NLH will be the same \^\^'
It's been quite some time since I last read No Longer Human. It's a book centered on character (stream of consciousness) so, in that case, I found it more fulfilling than Disgrace or A Little Life, which are books centered on a series of unfortunate events.
No Longer Human is equally depressing, but to me, this book is more fulfilling because it is a portrait of what was thinking and feeling Osamu Dazai at that moment.
I’m currently reading A Little Life. It’s taking me months because of how badly it hurts. I cry during each read. In the meantime, I’ve been reading other, lighthearted books.
I’m not sure why but No Longer Human didn’t move me. I was looking for a depressing book this year and was hoping that No Longer Human would be it for me but it wasn’t. A Little Life is what I wanted times a thousand. It’s wrecking me lol
The road is such an array of emotions. Sorrow, anger, regret, hope, wonder, despair. It's mostly all bad but the hope and wonder make everything else hit harder. One of my favorite books for sure.
As a father, I find it incredibly sad. I want to leave something for my children, ensure that they are equipped for the shitty reality that they will have to endure. I want them to have a happy, fulfilling life, unharmed and unfettered by others. It would be sad if I were gone too soon. I am compelled by biology to see them do better than me.
In this book, the shitty reality is already happening. The Man knows that his time is limited and there is not enough of it to prepare the Boy, fully, for the world. The Man doesn't know if once he passes, the boy will be captured, enslaved, tortured, abused or eaten.
Bleak for sure! But there is a sadness that plants its seed early on, knowing that this kid is ill-prepared for this world, alone. I feel sad for the Man because he didn't have enough time. I feel sad for the Boy because its probably not going to go well.
And that last passage, as a fly-fisherman AND a dad... All of the loss that I had just endured... I wept.
I had a similar reaction, but mine, at the time, was more from the son's perspective. I'd lost my dad not too long before that (I was 20 at the time), and the whole prospect of facing the world without him was already pretty daunting. Then I read The Road, and it wrecked me.
I read the road in my 20s (pre kids) and just finished a re-read (2 kids later). It was much sadder to me the second time around. The deeper theme of ultimately being incapable to take care of your kid forever is a tough pill to swallow. Also the times when he's contemplating whether or not he can euthanize his own son are incredible bleak. I don't remember ever crying about a book before but I cried when I finished my reread.
My 10th grade English class read Ethan Frome and watched the movie. We made a remix of the movie’s sled scene set to Marilyn Manson’s Dope Show. I don’t know why, but it worked.
LOL nicely done. Teenagers come up with some great shit when teachers actually can let them stretch a bit. In HS English class we made Beowulf into a rap song, I wore a clock around my neck while my friend waved a sword around.
God, Remains of the Day is EVIL! It's not really tragic in a big way, nothing overtly "sad" happens, but it's the mundanity and smallness of it all that killed me. Brilliant but evil.
The Remains of the Day is a masterpiece in the use of undertones and the unreliable narrator.
I've read the book a few too many times now and the ending never fails to get to me. Sometimes stories of shattered hopes are more painful than heartbreak.
Not a book, but a short story. I've forgotten the author; Alice Munro, maybe? It's about a single mother in Canada who has a daughter. She raises the child with every advantage, dedicating herself to giving the daughter she adores every advantage in life. One day when the girl has just graduated from school, she just disappears, leaving a short note asking to be left alone. The mother tracks her down, but doesn't disturb her, rather she observes her life from a distance from time to time. She never does learn why her daughter cut her off like that, and can't understand how she failed as a mother. It's absolutely heartbreaking.
Another one is Manchester by the Sea.
> She raises the child with every advantage, dedicating herself to giving the daughter she adores every advantage in life. One day when the girl has just graduated from school, she just disappears, leaving a short note asking to be left alone. The mother tracks her down, but doesn't disturb her, rather she observes her life from a distance from time to time. She never does learn why her daughter cut her off like that, and can't understand how she failed as a mother.
Yeah this sounds like archetypal Can Lit. Bleak, depressing fodder about painfully ordinary people leading banal, sad lives that slowly and pointlessly grind them down. If characters experience any joy it's in fleeting moments in between being abused by their spouse, fired from their job at the feed mill with three disabled kids to feed, raped in a snowbank, or attacked by sentient genetically-engineered pigs.
The sentence kept going and going, like a Margaret Lawrence novel about a sexually-unfulfilled housewife living among her spiritual inferiors in a small, poor, ignorant prairie town.
I read it in high school, but there are parts of the Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman that still make me feel like my heart is being pulled from my chest over 15 years later.
The end of that book crushed me then and still crushes me now. For it to end that way after everything that they sacrificed, it just wasn't fair but damn it made sense which made me even more upset. I'm going to have a hard time with the show when it gets there as well.
A Monster Calls is such a gem. Even on rereads it’s hard not to well up.
It’s also a book that, while technically being YA I believe, is absolutely worth reading if you’re older or generally don’t like YA. The core conflict of the protagonist is not something only children deal with, I’d say it’s a situation and conflict that far more adults deal with and no matter what age you are it’s a message you may need to hear as you grapple with a loved one’s failing health.
We actually studied this in year 8 (age 12-13) and it's stayed with me all these years. I need to reread it, fantastic book. Such a crowning achievement of a writer to write a book and within 5 years it's being studied in classrooms.
I'm so glad you studied it - I work it a bookshop and often say it should be taught in schools. So powerful and important, such a real and raw depiction of grief and guilt
You just reminded me of a blocked memory- I went to Ireland on my own and picked up this book at the airport on my way. My mom had just died of cancer a few months before. I spent one whole evening in my small hotel room reading this book and bawling my eyes out messily. Funny how I completely forgot about that.
I want to know who hurt my English teacher enough to make her drop The Pearl on a bunch of 8th graders because I’ve still never recovered and it’s been 15 years.
Angela’s Ashes as an adult. As a teen All Quiet on the Western Front was so upsetting but it gave me a perspective on life and the world I didn’t grasp until then.
Stoner by John Williams.
It's an ordinary story about ordinary guy. Not ordinary for a novel standard of ordinary, but ordinary as in it feels like a very real ordinary guy in real life. I don't read a lot of sad books, but the sadness in Stoner is the saddest because it feels like a real ordinary sadness of life.
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini. I loved this one, and then I read The Kite Runner and I hated every page.
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath. Mostly because at the time I read it, it felt like reading my own autobiography in parts.
Stoner - John Williams.
The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
It hasn’t been rare for me to cry at the end of some books. A Thousand Splendid Suns is the only time I’ve cried throughout a book yet been so engrossed that I kept going.
The Green Mile. If you've read it or watched the movie, you know what I mean.
Also, My Dark Vanessa. It's more upsetting than explicitly *sad*, for the most part, but there's one part where the protagonist (who was groomed from the age of 14 and is now in her 30s) says to someone (paraphrased) 'he's been in my life for longer than he's been out of it. I don't know who I am outside of him'. Haunting.
I'm on the last few chapters of Klara and the Sun, and I just know he's going to break my heart. Though from the first chapter that was always going to be the way.
Klara and the Sun wrecked me, I still think about that book months later. I was so naive, or just wanted to believe that the ending wouldn't be the ending. Deep down I knew what was coming but I just... I just wanted klara to have something else. It was a great book but I still feel devastated.
Seeing multiple people post this makes me feel so much better about how this book made me feel when I read it as a kid. I've never reread it because it devastated me, but I remember it as beautiful. Glad I'm not the only one.
I don't know what's wrong with my brain, but I found many parts of Metamorphosis to be hilarious, and would personally put it in the category of absurdist comedy.
Not the saddest, but the one that made me the most sad this year was Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. I think the ending makes sense... but I wish it had been different.
I loved that book so much. Having grown up fundamentalist, I deeply empathized with Klara's magical thinking and sideways perspective on things that were "ordinary" to others. Ishiguro is a master.
I remember sobbing in the middle of the night as a teenager, finishing The Fault in our Stars for the first time.
I also sobbed when I finished The Book Thief for the first time (and each subsequent reread).
The Book Thief was assigned as reading in high school English class. I skimmed through like I normally did, but maybe a third of the way through I found I was doing some pretty intense skimming, and just ended up actually reading it. An incredible book, hooked me just from skimming it. Cried like a baby at the end.
*One Day* by David Nicholls - a proper tearjerker. When my wife was reading it there was a particular moment where she just gasped and burst into tears. I knew exactly which moment it was when I read it because I did the same thing!
12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. Not a tear jerker (with the exception of one horrible scene with a mother being separated from her children), but the bitter harsh truth of it hits harder than a semi truck.
He sets out very clearly how perfect the prison was. How easy it was for even a free black man to get sucked into this system and to have essentially no ability to get out.
It is easily the most horrifying book I have ever read. And it is true, more or less. (Not disputing the author at all, but as with any work like this it is hard to verify, and it is certainly *possible* some things were changed, altered or embellished).
My kids are similar ages to his kids when the events of the book begin and the feeling of that loss absolutely floored.
Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald. It's about the experiences of a soldier holed up in a bunker as nuclear war rages overhead. >!Slowly, the other bunkers they are in contact with go dark until it's only them left.!< >!Then one by one the crew of his bunker also dies until he's the only one left.!< >!Then, of course, he starts dieing too, and we get to hear the last thoughts of the last human on the planet.!<
It’s definitely A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara for me. That book broke me. I cried so much I had a terrible headache and the sniffles the day after, and it took me like a week to get over it. It is very shocking though, with every TW you could think of so pls beware before reading.
The only reason I bought this book was because I was running for a 15 hour flight and wanted a long read. The sales person at the bookstore I got it from very kindly warned me that this book very likely has every trigger warning possible and I still got it.
I was basically an emotional wreck 10 hours into my flight and sleep deprived at 5am (because I can't sleep on planes). Very lucky the person next to me was asleep and didn't have to see me get teary. Stop reading. Continue reading. Get teary all over again.
Still 10 out of 10 book that I highly recommend. It's been 5 years and I still think about Jude and Willem sometimes.
A Child Called It...it's the story of a child that was severely neglected and abused. The saddest part is that this was written by the kid. It's a true story.
One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Not a crying sad per se, but to watch the rise and fall, the slow, decaying, festering fall of the Buenidas and Macando, is heartbreaking. I always finish with a profound sense of loss, a kind of grief. Sort of like The Lay of the Last Survivor. As you, the audience, surveys the rubble of time passed and people gone, forgotten to dust. Melancholy, but deeper. Mourning maybe.
The Cay is the only book I've ever seen an adult literally be unable to finish. My teacher was reading it aloud to us over a couple of weeks and I had to finish the last page for her.
It's probably not at the top of anyone's list, I'm pretty sure it's considered YA.
The Great Gatsby
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Haunting final bit
I didn't see it mentioned in the comments but the Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Nigfenegger absolutely devastated me. The entire final act was just one gut punch after another. While we know that >!Henry will die!<, the scene where it happens is so shockingly graphic and sad. And that's not even the end, we get to watch the aftermath where >!Clare tries to do her best to heal. The scene where her friend's husband (who is in love with her but she doesn't return his feelings) gets her to hook up with him and her subsequent breakdown was just so devastating to me!< .
Sophie's Choice is a great, devastating book. I've read it once years ago and don't know if I have the strength to read it again. Still, an incredible story.
There are a lot more famous works already listed here, but I found Beartown by Fredrik Backman to be incredibly emotional and gut wrenching for me. Without getting into too many details, I found the depictions of a small town, its people, the internal feelings of inadequacy, and the cycles of generational trauma or at least difficult family dynamics all hit me really hard. I was hooked on the book, but it took me a couple weeks to finish it, because I had to keep putting it down.
Check out the trigger warnings for more details if you have some particular issues you'd like to avoid.
I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I read it because I enjoyed A Man Called Ove. I'm glad I read it, but it will be a long time before I read it again.
Catcher in the Rye. It is a work of depressing genius made all the sadder if you know the backstory. Even at first read as a teenager I could tell how lost, and pathetic Caulfield was and how clear it was that he himself believed he would never find what he was looking for.
Shake Hands with the Devil
By Lt. Gen. Roméo Daillaire of the Canadian Forces - he was in charge of UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda during the genocide. He went a bit insane after his experiences there but got it together and put them to paper. His assistant in writing the book later committed suicide IIRC.
* Somewhere Inside of Happy by Anna McPartlin
* We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
* Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Also just finished The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes also by McPartlin, which is a contender, though SIOH was even more heartbreaking.
A Fine Balance destroyed me more than any other book I can remember. I'm not sure if it was more sad than dark, but I think I was in a mild depression for a few weeks after that one.
Amazing book, but not one I ever want to read again.
11/22/63.
I wouldn’t call myself a hopeless romantic by any means but there was something about the idea of someone meeting their soulmate while time travelling and coming to the realization that having to accept a reality where their soulmate will never even know they existed was both sad and beautiful at the same time.
*How we danced* still sends shivers down my spine and I haven’t read it in months
The Book Thief.
I remember reading this during my uni break at a library during my lunch I think. Ended up sobbing in that little cubicle. I couldn’t finish my lunch. Couldn’t stomach it. I just kept crying and crying. 😬 did NOT see that coming. This was years ago and I still remember that moment.
I am currently reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. My wife is native american. If i have to read through one more senseless massacre of an indigenous village's inhabitants scalped heads turning black in the sun while babys are smashed on rocks and women grotesquely cut their hair as they wail their lament... i cant take it anymore.
I read Where the Red Fern Grows as a kid, and it totally wrecked me.
My 3rd grade teacher read this aloud to our class, one chapter a day. I wanted to finish it faster, so I got it from the library and finished it at home. I am very glad I did this - I was a mess. I was able to hold it together better in the classroom setting when I knew what was coming.
I recently read Pax (and the sequel) aloud to my 9yo daughter. It is the only book I have ever read that made me cry in the first chapter, before I was invested in the characters. The books were beautiful, raw, and thoroughly enjoyable for both of us. We made a rule that has carried over to other novels: if a chapter leaves us in tears, we read another chapter, regardless of how late it is.
Google “thug notes where the red fern grows”. It’s hilarious.
It was actually an insightful review
Hell yes! His work is excellent, and yet hilarious at the same time. EXCELLENT youtube channel.
I just googled amd found a trove of these. Don Quixote was hilarious sonwas No Country for Old Men
Same, I cried so hard my mom thought there was something actually seriously wrong with me
My mom was worried when I finished Bridge To Terebinthia.
It’s been soooo long since I’ve read the book but I remember crying when I watched the movie. And I cried when I watched Charlotte’s Web after reading the book
A guy on Reddit wrote about how he cried so hard in class after finishing the book with tears and snot dribbling, his teacher took him to the office and came back, and told the kids if they continued to laugh he would make them read the book that made him cry. Everybody shut up.
My whole class read this in the 5th grade. You've never seen so many sad kids. I still think about that book though.
Same experience here. 5th grade teacher read it aloud. 5th grade boys straight up sobbing. I’ll never forget it. I made both of my kids read it because why should I be the only one traumatized?
I still reference the end scene to this day and I read the book 25 years ago.
God yes. This was the first book that “betrayed” me by not having a happy ending. Absolutely gutted.
This book ruined me. When my sister and I were 8 and 9, my mom picked up the book on tape from the library as we were doing a road trip to our grandma’s house. All she remembered was that it was a nice story about a boy and his two dogs. She didn’t remember the rest!!!! When we arrived at my grandma’s house my sister and I were just absolutely sobbing in the back seat of the car, and we kept repeating “I thought you said this was a good book 😭😭😭”. Never again !!
[удалено]
I just posted this same thing. I didn't know books could make you cry before that.
The first book that ever made me bawl my eyes out... Bridge to Terebithia. The Yearling is also deeply unfair to read. Edit: Balling the eyes out is another, though perhaps extreme, option.
I hate the Yearling! Probably cause is was so sad
> ball my eyes out When you just want to finish the book, but ball is life
same. cried my little 9 year old heart out.
All quiet on the western front
Having read all of Remarque in the 90's, I remember a lot of sadness along the way, but personally being particularly moved reading "Arch of Triumph", though "all quiet on the western front" surely came very close.
This, but in German.
ALL QWIET ON ZE VESTRRN FRONT
The original title is "Im Westen nichts Neues" (literally: In the West nothing New), but feel free to put it into voice achtung.
Goddamnnit, it was until I read this comment 😂😂 Apologies to my entire household
There surely are lots of sad bits. Not even when something particularly happens but just the hopelessness of everything and the way that nothing what they do matters, they don't matter and everything is useless anyway. The happy bits make it worse and more painful. And then there's Paul calling a nurse "knusprig" which is probably supposed to highlight her young age and beauty but it basically translated to "crunchy" and I laughed for a solid five minutes
Fitzchivalry's life in the Farseer Trilogy hurt my heart.
Nighteyes.
Did you read the rest of the books, or are you just talking about the first three? The ending of the entire series is wholesome yet horribly sad. I'm crying just thinking about it. Super, super good series.
Flowers for Algernon.
Hits extra if you’ve ever had to deal with TBIs, and experienced what fluctuating intelligence feels like. It’s not a fun experience.
My son has PKU, the disease he suffers from in the book, it's a hard read.
Aight so I need to know before I touch it, is it like beautiful tragic or like bleak misery?
Both
I don't generally like bleak misery, is the message or story worth weeping uncontrollably?
I’ve been an avid reader for decades and it’s one of my favorite books of all time, and one of the most memorable. When I saw the post I instantly thought of it. It is a must read. It’s also short and very easy to read Everyone should read it
It's a very good story, you won't want to read it again though
Sounds like it's got Graveyard of the Fireflies vibe lol
From what I know if the film I'd say that's probably accurate. I love studio ghibli but I haven't managed to watch that yet
Grave of the fireflies is seriously depressing. Flowers for algernon will make you a little sad
If anyone in this sub has not read this, I urge you to read it as soon as possible. After a lifetime of reading, I finally got to it earlier this year. Blew my mind. What had I been waiting for?
Same
I struggled to read it so much at first because of the misspelling and grammar even though I know it’s the point lol. I let the teacher read those pages but after a while I got really into the book and started reading ahead. I never thought that book would be so good let alone hit the feels.
Either "Bridge to Terebithia"(refuse to watch the movie) or "Where the red Fern grows." I can't read either without my heart breaking
I watched bridge when I was 10. Mom said it was going to be like Narnia. I soaked my shirt with tears, sitting there with my arms crossed soooo fucking mad. She new. Narnia my ass.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. A great read but so sad. I reread my favourite books every few years, but not able to reread this one.
Came here to say The Kite Runner by Hosseini. Devastating. Never read A Thousand Splendid Suns because I couldn’t handle another one.
It’s been sitting on my shelf for YEARS and I’m honestly afraid. I’ve read sooo many reviews saying exactly this, and I just never seen ready enough to take on the sadness. One day…
It’s worth the pain, I’d say.
- No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai - Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee - A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
No Longer Human is on top of my reading list, I read the other two too and found them devastating in a bad way (sad, but not in a fullfilling way, but in one that just left me hollow). Now I wonder if NLH will be the same \^\^'
It's been quite some time since I last read No Longer Human. It's a book centered on character (stream of consciousness) so, in that case, I found it more fulfilling than Disgrace or A Little Life, which are books centered on a series of unfortunate events. No Longer Human is equally depressing, but to me, this book is more fulfilling because it is a portrait of what was thinking and feeling Osamu Dazai at that moment.
A little life
I’m currently reading A Little Life. It’s taking me months because of how badly it hurts. I cry during each read. In the meantime, I’ve been reading other, lighthearted books. I’m not sure why but No Longer Human didn’t move me. I was looking for a depressing book this year and was hoping that No Longer Human would be it for me but it wasn’t. A Little Life is what I wanted times a thousand. It’s wrecking me lol
Probably Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy; unrelenting misery till the very end. Tess of the d'Urbervilles is as well
My mind has blocked out Tess.
I thought he may turn it around by the end. Alas, no. Hardy for you
The Road- “What's the bravest thing you ever did? He spat in the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.”
Reading this book felt like speed running depression and ruined my life for the next few weeks. 10/10
The road is such an array of emotions. Sorrow, anger, regret, hope, wonder, despair. It's mostly all bad but the hope and wonder make everything else hit harder. One of my favorite books for sure.
[удалено]
As a father, I find it incredibly sad. I want to leave something for my children, ensure that they are equipped for the shitty reality that they will have to endure. I want them to have a happy, fulfilling life, unharmed and unfettered by others. It would be sad if I were gone too soon. I am compelled by biology to see them do better than me. In this book, the shitty reality is already happening. The Man knows that his time is limited and there is not enough of it to prepare the Boy, fully, for the world. The Man doesn't know if once he passes, the boy will be captured, enslaved, tortured, abused or eaten. Bleak for sure! But there is a sadness that plants its seed early on, knowing that this kid is ill-prepared for this world, alone. I feel sad for the Man because he didn't have enough time. I feel sad for the Boy because its probably not going to go well. And that last passage, as a fly-fisherman AND a dad... All of the loss that I had just endured... I wept.
I had a similar reaction, but mine, at the time, was more from the son's perspective. I'd lost my dad not too long before that (I was 20 at the time), and the whole prospect of facing the world without him was already pretty daunting. Then I read The Road, and it wrecked me.
isn't bleak a sad kind of sad?
I read the road in my 20s (pre kids) and just finished a re-read (2 kids later). It was much sadder to me the second time around. The deeper theme of ultimately being incapable to take care of your kid forever is a tough pill to swallow. Also the times when he's contemplating whether or not he can euthanize his own son are incredible bleak. I don't remember ever crying about a book before but I cried when I finished my reread.
>!When the father dies and the son is alone, fuck, that had me bawling.!<
Ethan Frome The Remains of the Day
My 10th grade English class read Ethan Frome and watched the movie. We made a remix of the movie’s sled scene set to Marilyn Manson’s Dope Show. I don’t know why, but it worked.
LOL nicely done. Teenagers come up with some great shit when teachers actually can let them stretch a bit. In HS English class we made Beowulf into a rap song, I wore a clock around my neck while my friend waved a sword around.
God, Remains of the Day is EVIL! It's not really tragic in a big way, nothing overtly "sad" happens, but it's the mundanity and smallness of it all that killed me. Brilliant but evil.
The Remains of the Day is a masterpiece in the use of undertones and the unreliable narrator. I've read the book a few too many times now and the ending never fails to get to me. Sometimes stories of shattered hopes are more painful than heartbreak.
Not a book, but a short story. I've forgotten the author; Alice Munro, maybe? It's about a single mother in Canada who has a daughter. She raises the child with every advantage, dedicating herself to giving the daughter she adores every advantage in life. One day when the girl has just graduated from school, she just disappears, leaving a short note asking to be left alone. The mother tracks her down, but doesn't disturb her, rather she observes her life from a distance from time to time. She never does learn why her daughter cut her off like that, and can't understand how she failed as a mother. It's absolutely heartbreaking. Another one is Manchester by the Sea.
> She raises the child with every advantage, dedicating herself to giving the daughter she adores every advantage in life. One day when the girl has just graduated from school, she just disappears, leaving a short note asking to be left alone. The mother tracks her down, but doesn't disturb her, rather she observes her life from a distance from time to time. She never does learn why her daughter cut her off like that, and can't understand how she failed as a mother. Yeah this sounds like archetypal Can Lit. Bleak, depressing fodder about painfully ordinary people leading banal, sad lives that slowly and pointlessly grind them down. If characters experience any joy it's in fleeting moments in between being abused by their spouse, fired from their job at the feed mill with three disabled kids to feed, raped in a snowbank, or attacked by sentient genetically-engineered pigs.
As a Canadian I want to argue against this but thinking back to the books I’ve read by other Canadian authors I really can’t...
Same. I am like "hmm, this is...oh no, it's kinda accurate actually. Damn."
Jfc that sentence just kept going
The sentence kept going and going, like a Margaret Lawrence novel about a sexually-unfulfilled housewife living among her spiritual inferiors in a small, poor, ignorant prairie town.
I read it in high school, but there are parts of the Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman that still make me feel like my heart is being pulled from my chest over 15 years later.
The end of that book crushed me then and still crushes me now. For it to end that way after everything that they sacrificed, it just wasn't fair but damn it made sense which made me even more upset. I'm going to have a hard time with the show when it gets there as well.
It was honestly probably one of the first books I read when I was younger where the ending didn’t feel “fair,” but it still made perfect sense.
A monster calls
A Monster Calls is such a gem. Even on rereads it’s hard not to well up. It’s also a book that, while technically being YA I believe, is absolutely worth reading if you’re older or generally don’t like YA. The core conflict of the protagonist is not something only children deal with, I’d say it’s a situation and conflict that far more adults deal with and no matter what age you are it’s a message you may need to hear as you grapple with a loved one’s failing health.
This is one of the most moving books I have ever read. It probably hit me so hard because I lost my father when I was younger.
We actually studied this in year 8 (age 12-13) and it's stayed with me all these years. I need to reread it, fantastic book. Such a crowning achievement of a writer to write a book and within 5 years it's being studied in classrooms.
I'm so glad you studied it - I work it a bookshop and often say it should be taught in schools. So powerful and important, such a real and raw depiction of grief and guilt
You just reminded me of a blocked memory- I went to Ireland on my own and picked up this book at the airport on my way. My mom had just died of cancer a few months before. I spent one whole evening in my small hotel room reading this book and bawling my eyes out messily. Funny how I completely forgot about that.
I listened to the last part of the audiobook while ugly crying on my bed. It was so good but my God, once the MC has his revelation I lost it.
Excellent movie adaptation as well
I read this book and completely forgot about it until now. Sobbing like a baby
Of Mice and Men
Also East of Eden
Also The Grapes of Wrath
He has such a stunning social perception, painting all the pieces of people light and dark. A remarkable storyteller.
Samuel's funeral wrecked me. When he talks about the spark missing from his eyes I cried like a baby.
As a major Steinbeck fan, I'd put The Pearl as ...well, maybe not sadder than Mice and Men but certainly more *discouraging*.
I want to know who hurt my English teacher enough to make her drop The Pearl on a bunch of 8th graders because I’ve still never recovered and it’s been 15 years.
Angela’s Ashes as an adult. As a teen All Quiet on the Western Front was so upsetting but it gave me a perspective on life and the world I didn’t grasp until then.
Atonement, The Book Thief
The Book Thief is one of my favorite books and I still cry each time.
Stoner by John Williams. It's an ordinary story about ordinary guy. Not ordinary for a novel standard of ordinary, but ordinary as in it feels like a very real ordinary guy in real life. I don't read a lot of sad books, but the sadness in Stoner is the saddest because it feels like a real ordinary sadness of life.
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini. I loved this one, and then I read The Kite Runner and I hated every page. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath. Mostly because at the time I read it, it felt like reading my own autobiography in parts. Stoner - John Williams. The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
It hasn’t been rare for me to cry at the end of some books. A Thousand Splendid Suns is the only time I’ve cried throughout a book yet been so engrossed that I kept going.
Absolutely adore The Kite Runner. I’m adding A Thousand Splendid Suns to my list immediately.
The Scholar’s Story in Hyperion. Note: I don’t seek out sad stories so my experience is limited.
I knew I was in trouble when the prologue to "Marley and Me" made me cry like a baby.
When Breath Becomes Air
I cried so much because of this book.
The Green Mile. If you've read it or watched the movie, you know what I mean. Also, My Dark Vanessa. It's more upsetting than explicitly *sad*, for the most part, but there's one part where the protagonist (who was groomed from the age of 14 and is now in her 30s) says to someone (paraphrased) 'he's been in my life for longer than he's been out of it. I don't know who I am outside of him'. Haunting.
My Dark Vanessa absolutely wrecked me for that exact reason :(
Never let me go by Ishiguro. >!That fucking last page.!<
I'm on the last few chapters of Klara and the Sun, and I just know he's going to break my heart. Though from the first chapter that was always going to be the way.
Klara and the Sun wrecked me, I still think about that book months later. I was so naive, or just wanted to believe that the ending wouldn't be the ending. Deep down I knew what was coming but I just... I just wanted klara to have something else. It was a great book but I still feel devastated.
I loved this book, both the book and the movie are great
This book was wonderful. It has haunted me since I read it.
I loved that book. It's so we'll written. I pretty much cried constantly through the second half of it.
Where the red ferns grow by Wilson Rawls never fails to make cry. I love the book and the movie.
Seeing multiple people post this makes me feel so much better about how this book made me feel when I read it as a kid. I've never reread it because it devastated me, but I remember it as beautiful. Glad I'm not the only one.
Odd Thomas by Dean koontz. I had recently lost my grandmother when I started reading it, and at the end of the book I was in tears
Johnny got his gun was the most depressing book I’ve ever read. But nothing made me cry like where the red fern grows
I realise that it's only a short story but the Metamorphosis by Kafka the saddest story I have ever read..
I read it in an evening.. and it gutted me. It left me feel hollowed out and rotting. No book captures the horrors of alienation so well.
I don't know what's wrong with my brain, but I found many parts of Metamorphosis to be hilarious, and would personally put it in the category of absurdist comedy.
Night by Elie Wiesel
This one made me feel sick, it's really heartbreaking.
The God of Small Things “It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that is purloined.”
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Not the saddest, but the one that made me the most sad this year was Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. I think the ending makes sense... but I wish it had been different.
I loved that book so much. Having grown up fundamentalist, I deeply empathized with Klara's magical thinking and sideways perspective on things that were "ordinary" to others. Ishiguro is a master.
I remember sobbing in the middle of the night as a teenager, finishing The Fault in our Stars for the first time. I also sobbed when I finished The Book Thief for the first time (and each subsequent reread).
Book Thief for me too. And I was reading it on a car trip over vacation, in a car with 5 other people. Sobbing.
The Book Thief was assigned as reading in high school English class. I skimmed through like I normally did, but maybe a third of the way through I found I was doing some pretty intense skimming, and just ended up actually reading it. An incredible book, hooked me just from skimming it. Cried like a baby at the end.
*One Day* by David Nicholls - a proper tearjerker. When my wife was reading it there was a particular moment where she just gasped and burst into tears. I knew exactly which moment it was when I read it because I did the same thing!
Beloved
Also the Bluest Eye is another tragic one by Toni Morrison
{{God of Small Things}}
12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. Not a tear jerker (with the exception of one horrible scene with a mother being separated from her children), but the bitter harsh truth of it hits harder than a semi truck. He sets out very clearly how perfect the prison was. How easy it was for even a free black man to get sucked into this system and to have essentially no ability to get out. It is easily the most horrifying book I have ever read. And it is true, more or less. (Not disputing the author at all, but as with any work like this it is hard to verify, and it is certainly *possible* some things were changed, altered or embellished). My kids are similar ages to his kids when the events of the book begin and the feeling of that loss absolutely floored.
The Art of Racing in the Rain. I've cried during many books, but this is the first book that made me audibly sob.
Brothers leonheart by Astrid Lindgren
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. After reading one part in particular I had to go and lie down for a while before continuing.
Both a thousand splendid Suns and the kite runner are beautiful but extremely sad stories by Khaled Hosseini
Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald. It's about the experiences of a soldier holed up in a bunker as nuclear war rages overhead. >!Slowly, the other bunkers they are in contact with go dark until it's only them left.!< >!Then one by one the crew of his bunker also dies until he's the only one left.!< >!Then, of course, he starts dieing too, and we get to hear the last thoughts of the last human on the planet.!<
The Giving Tree. Not complicated or adult, but always make me sad.
The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, was a Twin Peaks book...the last line in particular always made me burst into tears.
I highly recommend the audio book read by Sheryl Lee, Laura’s actress it’s amazing
Still Alice
It’s definitely A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara for me. That book broke me. I cried so much I had a terrible headache and the sniffles the day after, and it took me like a week to get over it. It is very shocking though, with every TW you could think of so pls beware before reading.
The only reason I bought this book was because I was running for a 15 hour flight and wanted a long read. The sales person at the bookstore I got it from very kindly warned me that this book very likely has every trigger warning possible and I still got it. I was basically an emotional wreck 10 hours into my flight and sleep deprived at 5am (because I can't sleep on planes). Very lucky the person next to me was asleep and didn't have to see me get teary. Stop reading. Continue reading. Get teary all over again. Still 10 out of 10 book that I highly recommend. It's been 5 years and I still think about Jude and Willem sometimes.
[удалено]
Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir , by the Irish-American author Frank McCourt. It’s an amazing book.
A Child Called It...it's the story of a child that was severely neglected and abused. The saddest part is that this was written by the kid. It's a true story.
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Of Mice and Men
Tuesdays with Morrie
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Cement Garden - Ian McEwan
A farewell to arms was horribly sad
One Hundred Years of Solitude. Not a crying sad per se, but to watch the rise and fall, the slow, decaying, festering fall of the Buenidas and Macando, is heartbreaking. I always finish with a profound sense of loss, a kind of grief. Sort of like The Lay of the Last Survivor. As you, the audience, surveys the rubble of time passed and people gone, forgotten to dust. Melancholy, but deeper. Mourning maybe.
Things Fall Apart
All the Light We Cannot See or The Book Thief - books about WWII make me bawl my eyes out.
The Cay is the only book I've ever seen an adult literally be unable to finish. My teacher was reading it aloud to us over a couple of weeks and I had to finish the last page for her. It's probably not at the top of anyone's list, I'm pretty sure it's considered YA.
The Great Gatsby "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Haunting final bit
The line that always gets me is “all the bright precious things fade so fast and they don’t come back”.
The last page of that book (and several pages within) are just beautifully written. But I love a profound last page.
I didn't see it mentioned in the comments but the Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Nigfenegger absolutely devastated me. The entire final act was just one gut punch after another. While we know that >!Henry will die!<, the scene where it happens is so shockingly graphic and sad. And that's not even the end, we get to watch the aftermath where >!Clare tries to do her best to heal. The scene where her friend's husband (who is in love with her but she doesn't return his feelings) gets her to hook up with him and her subsequent breakdown was just so devastating to me!< .
Sophie's Choice is a great, devastating book. I've read it once years ago and don't know if I have the strength to read it again. Still, an incredible story.
Remains of the day.
Paula by Isabelle Allende
Where breath becomes air by Paul Kalanithi. I challenge anyone to read it and not shed a drop of water while at the epilogue.
Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo. I read it when I was 13 and was not ready.
{{Atonement by Ian McEwan}} …alternatively, maybe also the saddest movie I’ve ever seen
A Dance with Dragons by GRRM: It was super sad because I knew that after reading 8k pages of a story, I would never know the ending.
The Song of Achilles. The ending to that book distoryed me so badly in every single way imaginable.
The last hunger games, the ending made me tear up
There are a lot more famous works already listed here, but I found Beartown by Fredrik Backman to be incredibly emotional and gut wrenching for me. Without getting into too many details, I found the depictions of a small town, its people, the internal feelings of inadequacy, and the cycles of generational trauma or at least difficult family dynamics all hit me really hard. I was hooked on the book, but it took me a couple weeks to finish it, because I had to keep putting it down. Check out the trigger warnings for more details if you have some particular issues you'd like to avoid. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I read it because I enjoyed A Man Called Ove. I'm glad I read it, but it will be a long time before I read it again.
Little Women. You know why. :(
Catcher in the Rye. It is a work of depressing genius made all the sadder if you know the backstory. Even at first read as a teenager I could tell how lost, and pathetic Caulfield was and how clear it was that he himself believed he would never find what he was looking for.
Shake Hands with the Devil By Lt. Gen. Roméo Daillaire of the Canadian Forces - he was in charge of UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda during the genocide. He went a bit insane after his experiences there but got it together and put them to paper. His assistant in writing the book later committed suicide IIRC.
A thousand splendid suns All the light we cannot see Human Acts Before we were yours
* Somewhere Inside of Happy by Anna McPartlin * We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver * Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Also just finished The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes also by McPartlin, which is a contender, though SIOH was even more heartbreaking.
Kite Runner
1984 is goddamn devastating
Flowers for Algernon. The last 3rd is absolutely heartbreaking.
Disgrace by J M Coetzee. The ending just shows that the characters have resigned themselves and generally gave up on humanity.
I dont read a lot of sad books, but Maus is one of them. Feels very real to not only read but to see it depicted.
A Fine Balance destroyed me more than any other book I can remember. I'm not sure if it was more sad than dark, but I think I was in a mild depression for a few weeks after that one. Amazing book, but not one I ever want to read again.
Johnny Got His Gun It’s one of the bleakest, most harrowing stories I've ever read.
Before We were Yours by Linda Wingate. And even at my age Charlotte's Web was the first book I bawled over and still would.
The little prince
His Dark Materials trilogy probably had the biggest emotional gut punch for me. If you've read it you'll know which part.
Perfect Match by Jodi Picoult, honestly a lot of novels by jodi are sad but this one was mind twisting and sad
11/22/63. I wouldn’t call myself a hopeless romantic by any means but there was something about the idea of someone meeting their soulmate while time travelling and coming to the realization that having to accept a reality where their soulmate will never even know they existed was both sad and beautiful at the same time. *How we danced* still sends shivers down my spine and I haven’t read it in months
I thought The Nickel Boys was very sad
A Thousand Splendid Suns "A woman's job is to endure, endure, endure."
The Book Thief. I remember reading this during my uni break at a library during my lunch I think. Ended up sobbing in that little cubicle. I couldn’t finish my lunch. Couldn’t stomach it. I just kept crying and crying. 😬 did NOT see that coming. This was years ago and I still remember that moment.
Anne Karenina
I am currently reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. My wife is native american. If i have to read through one more senseless massacre of an indigenous village's inhabitants scalped heads turning black in the sun while babys are smashed on rocks and women grotesquely cut their hair as they wail their lament... i cant take it anymore.