What are the most depressing books you have read?

For me it is

1984

animal farm

the chocolate war

Wicked

on edit:The chocolate war was the most depressing and it brought me to tears.

Where the Red Fern Grows.

No contest.

i bawled when i read that book

until I realized they always made me feel depressed and like I needed a shower.

I had completely blocked them from my memory. I think I actually might have read more than one of those books. It's probably why I take head meds now days. I'm glad I've got a therapy session tomorrow. She's going to earn her money.

I'm sorry, those were some very disturbing books, and all of my friends loved them, I felt like a leper because I couldn't bare to read them after the first two.

it's up there with "Mandingo"

The most recent one, The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam, I read in November, and it had me so depressed I was in a shaking, sobbing ball on the floor for a while. The book is set in Afghanistan, and it is totally heartbreaking. I decided that after that book, I wouldn't read anything depressing until after the holidays. It's been pretty light fare since then.

...by Jean Rhys

First let me say that I'm a _huge_ fan of Don DeLillo. I could read "Underworld" every day for the rest of my life and find something new every time. But "The Body Artist" depressed the crap out of me. Maybe I need to give it a second chance, but I'm not sure I want to risk feeling that bummed out again.

I had to quit reading his books for a while. Carson McCullers gets to one, as well. :hi:

about "The Body Artist," but I'm kinda even creeped out about giving that one a second chance. I do think DeLillo is underestimated as a writer. His use of language is honest, gorgeous and penetrating, but geez, "The Body Artist" is a downer.

for some reason, I tend to put them in a simlilar category!


:hi:


How was your Christmas? Hugs and Gute Neues Jahr to both of you!

"A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry

http://www.amazon.com/Fine-Balance-Oprahs-Book-Club/dp/140003065X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230555453&sr=8-1

It starts depressing and gets even more so throughout the book. But it's one of those that even though it depresses you, in the end, you're glad you read it.

I hated the ending so much I threw the book across the room and stayed away from 'The Classics' for years after. It's about grinding, relentless misery and everyone dies in the end including the baby and some stranger gets saved by sucking the mother's breastmilk. I truly hated that ending. I felt like I'd been mind raped.

I don't dislike Steinbeck though. His other stuff is OK.

also, the OP's right about 1984. First time I read that book, I flung it across the room once I read the ending.

There are more depressing stories, but perhaps no other such gratuitous downers. It's the story of a last-ditch attempt at manned exploration of Saturn's eponymous moon, by a bunch of astronaut has-beens using recycled shuttle and Apollo tech. It's a one-way journey, so you know it can't end well, but...









{SPOILERS}

















Baxter feels it necessary for his heroes to observe, at a distance, a nuclear war on Earth which may end all life on the planet--before the remaining Titan explorers die one by one. Oh, he finds a way to give us a "happy" ending (resurrection of a couple of the astronauts a few billion years later by native Titanians), but damn, it's a depressing journey.

early 70s unredemptive moral confusion book!"

I also just read Jerry Spinelli's "Loser," which made me cry, as well as Kate diCamillo's "Miraculous Story of Edwin Tulane."

When I was a teenager I had a generally positive view of Christianity. When I began reading the Bible I was pretty surprised by its hatefulness, ignorance and violence. I found this depressing because I still believed that these were divine pronouncements and that as an individual I had the duty to accept them as accurate and moral.

At many points I wanted to throw the book across the room, but I wanted to finish it out of sheer stubbornness. What an awful, awful book.

don't need no stinking editors!
The first two books were really well done pulp, but "Hannibal" was indeed a pretentious and ridiculous mess.

sad and twisted, but brilliant.

Pretty grim.

I couldn't believe it made Oprah's book club.

That one left me haunted for a couple of weeks.

first one that comes to mind.

Johnny got his gun....... I was stunned when reading this book. :cry:

"Peter Cottontail"

However,"Last Exit to Brooklyn" is also the greatest post-war novel.

Not depressing really...just sickening.

I tore it up after I read it.

I can see what he was trying to do with it, but it just didn't work.
I agree with you; it is just sickening.

nothing but despair and hate and sheer viciousness...but it was well written and compelling as in we've got to get away from this...

The Stranger or The Plague. When it comes to writing depressing literature the French have a real talent...

Fascinating, but utterly depressing.

I told my sister NOT to read them .She is depressed from a recent stroke and the aftermath that goes with such a life change and I didn't think she needed to read anything that angst ridden!

but it's more existential than depressing, don't you think?



:rofl: I always think about that book when i encounter bizarre bureaucracy!

maybe that's just me. Maybe I shouldn't identify so much with Kafka characters. That probably reveals something either about me, or about how I see myself.

when I was taking a lot of college philosophy courses, including Existential philosophy and a Kafka seminar from a leading Kafka scholar,

"Don't be an existentialist, you'll ruin your 20s!"


That was almost 30 years ago, and I have never forgotten his sage advice. Art, wherever you are, thank you!


:rofl:

My husband thought there was something
SERIOUSLY wrong with me when I started
sobbing in bed at the ending.

Seriously, it made me cry out loud.

But it went a little ways in reminding
me about the existence of goodness and
innocence even in the worst of circumstances.

Most books by Thomas Hardy and A.J. Cronin
are big downers that must not be missed.

I have ever read and it's in some ways aimed at kids. I have an English BA and I've read many Russian writers, etc., but Pullman is a trip!

That really surprised me!

Although I was disappointed in the 3rd book.

I thought it really dragged compared to the 2nd....

the mood I was in. And I'm someone who rarely finds ANY book depressing. I think it was a bit of that Cambridge/Oxford existential mood/bureaucratic/religious cynicism, perhaps. I found his lack of trust in almost any institution troubling, and the true threats to personal liberty disturbing. Compared to many books ostensibly directed to young people (at least to some extent), I thought it left too much of a sour taste in the mouth, and perhaps the soul.



Maybe I simply find aspects of Milton disturbing! :rofl:

the cynicism!

:hi:

(MASSIVE SPOILER)

When she crosses the river... :cry:

by Jerzy Kosinski.

The first time I read it I was left feeling completely hopeless about life and humanity, but I was only twenty at the time.

You'll like the one I mentioned up-thread..

"The Book Thief".

Same cast of characters, better written (I think)
and strangely uplifting.

by Dalton Trumbo

It got such good reviews. Yeeesh!

and The Tender Land by Kathleen Finneran

Yes, the incredibly depressing movie of the same name was based on it.
O'Brien killed himself shortly after the film rights were sold.

and depressed by the whole situation. Although I really like McCourt's writing.

=sigh=

I'm too sensitive sometimes. :eyes:

for a class on tragedy I'm teaching, and damn is it tragic.

each time. I read "Far from the Madding Crowd", and it was only kind of sad. Tess was really sad, and while I haven't read Jude (and don't know if I'm likely to), I've heard it's incredibly sad.

turn the page! (Hint: Don't look in the closet.)

Another like this is "The Jungle"
page after page of nauseating detail
and tragedy.


"I will work harder."

:wow:

Read it in high school and still can't get it out of my head.

The Road

:cry: :cry: :cry:

I never enjoyed watching another Bing Crosby picture again without seeing an angry, violent lout who seemingly enjoyed physically abusing his children.

that guy was depressed...

I do not, and vice versa.


1984 was depressing, but thats because the guy did two things wrong, he tried to fight evil with evil, and he gave up instead of learning.

Howard Zinn's the Peoples History of the United States. Was very depressing for me.

But with my view on life, and death for that matter, books others see as depressing I do not. Hard to explain.

:(

With some notable exceptions:

Dr. Seuss

Dr. Doolittle

Richard Scary

Most of the rest are preachy and demeaning.

what was that about?
:hug:

what was that about?
:hug:

Loved Franklin's "Hell at the Breech".

A bit gory, a bit dark,but wonderfully lyrical, much like RicK Bragg.

Franklin sets his book early 1900 in SW Alabama history, fictionalizes it up a bit.

So I got Smonk.

Opened the jacket cover:
Description of Smonk. the title character:

"Syphillitic, consumptive,gouty, and goitered, ...he abhors horses, goats, and the Irish".

This is NOT a redeeming book, no matter how ironic the humor.
Practically everybody dies, or deserves to.

Wanted to take a shower and a drink after the last page, then bang my head on the wall to rid myself of the memory of reading it.

I put it up for trade on Bookmooch, for the Stephen King and VC Andrews fans.

Strangely though, I only cried when the main character finally realized that his wife(his first wife's sister who he married for convience) always loved him when they were at the end of their lives. It was depressing when all his loved ones died, but it got rather predictable.

Np Patrick Swayze character in the book. No happy endings. Just pure misery.

'The Sound and the Fury' needs no explanation, for those who've read it, while 'As I Lay Dying' is quite a funny book in parts, but ultimately depressing for what it says about the tenuousness, even the impossibility, of true human connection.

'I Am the Cheese' (Cormier again...) bummed the hell out of me when I first read it in seventh grade, and even rereading it as a junior in high school it retained its impact.

'Born on the Fourth of July' and 'Johnny Got His Gun' would also have to be on the list, the former because it's non-fiction, the latter because it's close enough. Reading either one makes me want to crack a chickenhawk College Republican over the head.

A recent depressing (but mind-blowingly awesome) read was 'Iodine' by Haven Kimmel, which I believe was published just this past summer. For those who don't mind a convoluted, ambiguous story with disturbing subject matter, I can't think of a book from the past several years that I'd recommend more highly.

I honestly don't know why I made myself finish it.

I read it IN Yosemite.

The worst part?

That day I had had a really nice picnic at a spot where a woman was BRUTALLY murdered. :scared:

...the anti-hero with leprosy.

Ohdeargod.

...who ends up falling for a woman who turns out to be his daughter by the woman he raped.

It's like Tolkien meets Jerry Springer. And not in a good way.

That book was a complete downer, though it accomplished real good in the aftermath... :(

a collection of short stories, iirc.

...but it's more than two years old (and still active).

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=208x10342

My answer here is the same as my answer there: Sophie's Choice.

it was the only book that made me tear up....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodnight_Mr_Tom