Most depressing book?

I read "My Childhood" by Gorky when I was in college. I think it took me at least 2 years to shake off the horror and depression.

And yes, I can see where reading that plot would be depressing.

Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground.

Not top on the list, but those Russian sure know how to top sadness.

I loved the novel, though there was a great build up to a depressing/disturbing conclusion.

The first sentence: "This is the saddest story I have ever heard."

Yep.

not only made me depressed, but very untrusting of humanity.

The movie was/is one of my guilty pleasures, but it is NOTHING like the book.

For instance, Mila 18 by Leon Uris

will give you nightmares galore.

I think about it from time to time...that teenager who was the gem of the village he took special delight in destroying and the twins.

Mostly because almost everything in the book is happening now. Orwell was just about 22 years too early with his prediction, that's all.

That book devastated me. When Winston Smith was betrayed I was aghast; I really wanted him to live free of Big Brother.

... that like the Ghost of Christmas To Come, Orwell was presenting a warning, not sketching out the inevitable.

And that, like Scrooge, it's up to us what we do with it ...

The Skin

Never ages, never irrelevant. As a matter of fact, more timely than ever.

Notes From Underground, definitely.

But the Gulag Archipelago still bothers me to this day. That was some twisted stuff to have to read. The Black Marias picking you up in the middle of the night, and the single lightbulb on 24 hours in the prison cell, and the psychotic trials. It's been years since I've read it and I can still remember whole parts of that damn book.

child abuse by a crazy mom who only called him it.

I have not read it, but I know that's the one you mean.

Dysfunction For Dollars

By PAT JORDAN
Published: July 28, 2002

"It's not about the books," he says. "My fans are buying the DNA of Dave." Dave Pelzer is sitting in the lobby of the Hilton in Daytona Beach, Fla., watching college girls in bikinis run by. He's a vaguely good-looking man, vaguely nerdy, with a squinting, almost spinsterish smile. "I was shy with girls," he says. "At 21, I had this girl in my room. I poured her a glass of wine, turned around, and she was taking her shirt off. I said, 'I guess it's all right to kiss you.'"

Pelzer, 41, the author of three autobiographical books and one self-help book, is on his spring speaking and book-signing tour. Daytona is one of the bigger cities on his route; most of his stops are in smaller towns. After a speech in the morning in Daytona Beach, then a book signing later that day, he will leave at 1 a.m., drive two hours to Orlando Airport, catch a 6 a.m. flight to Butte, Mont., and then fly to North Platte, Neb.

"I did 'Oprah' in January," he says. "My books got a little bounce, but Oprah's not enough to make the New York Times best-seller list." Pelzer is a man who is fairly obsessed with the New York Times best-seller list. His first three books have been on The Times's nonfiction paperback list for a combined total of 448 weeks, which is unprecedented in the paper's record-keeping. The books are protected there, like squalling eaglets that refuse to leave the nest, primarily by bulk sales. These are large single purchases of hundreds or thousands of copies of a book from bookstores or online booksellers. They can significantly inflate an author's sales and are denoted by daggers on the Times list. Late last year, all of Pelzer's books fell off the list; then in late January his first three books miraculously reappeared in almost the identical spots they had held for years.

Pelzer is relentless in peddling his books. He speaks more than 270 days a year, and after many of his talks he sells copies of his books to the crowd assembled there. To watch him work is to be put in mind of those itinerant preachers of the early part of last century. They traveled the dusty back roads of America, put up their revival tents in an open field and then laid on hands and healed, or swindled, their believers. In Pelzer's case, how much he is healing or how much he is swindling is unclear and depends in large part on whether or not you believe the horrific story he has so profitably told and retold and continues, day after day, to tell.

"A Child Called 'It,'" Pelzer's first and biggest book, was published by Health Communications Inc., a publisher of self-help books in Deerfield Beach, Fla. Pelzer claims he got no advance and received net royalties of only 3 to 7 percent, but his contract at H.C.I. showed that he got 15 to 20 percent of the net sale of each book. "David's always complaining we don't appreciate him," says the company's publisher, Peter Vegso. "David's a professional victim. I haven't a clue if his abuse stories are true, but we kept his book in stock when it wasn't selling. Then Dave got on Montel Williams, and there was an instant demand."

"A Child Called 'It,'" a curious book told through the eyes of Pelzer as a small child, age 4 to 12, has spent 215 weeks and counting on the best-seller list. Over the course of 160 pages, Pelzer tells how his mother, Catherine, burns David's arm over the kitchen stove, smears a feces-stained diaper in his face, makes him vomit and then eat it, stabs him in the stomach, starves him for 10 days, makes him drink ammonia and separates him from his four brothers, who never witness his abuse.

more: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9404E4DE1538F93BA15754C0A9649C8B63

Margaret Atwood

but read it. It's a futuristic tale where the fundies take over...very frightening

!

The Joad's were the most unfortunate (but determined) folks I've read about in a story,

where the duaghter who has lost her baby nurses the sick man at her bosom. It was a little over-the-top for me and vey jarring since the rest of the book was so realistic.

At the at point I was almost overwhelmed by the constant stream of negativity. (Geez! I sound like Sutherland's character in 'Kelly's Heroes'!) It did seem like the only area where someone was saved!

into a container and avoided the contact.

Gratuitous female "sacrifice" I think...Male authors seem to like the idea of females sacrificing something...Their honor, self-respect, whatever..usually in the interests of "others".

Perhaps King Leopold's Ghost.

n/t

I thought this was one of the best-written books I've read lately....

A play I read in college and that awful part about the baby that made me throw the book against the wall. Left it there for a day before I could resume reading it.

Anybody that thinks it's a funny war story hasn't read it often enough.

That being said, the Chapter "The Eternal City" is one of the most evocative, horrifying and, yes, depressing pieces of literature I've ever read.

It's my favorite novel ever.

I first read it while I was in the Marine Crotch and laughed my ass off.

Over the years, it has become darker and more difficult to laugh.

This last time, the bit that stuck with me was the idea by the generals to bomb the Italian village to block the road. Too much like what's going on in too many places today where life is ignored in favor of some goal like having a nice bomb pattern for the aerial photographs.

It's all just too fucking true.

But, like you, I always find the ending hopeful.

Not my favorite novel of all time, ("War and Peace" is just in it's own catagory - like Beethoven's 9th Symphony or Picasso's "Guernica"), but it's political influence on me, and many of my generation is still felt.

See my thread of 9/2003: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=206684

No black humor, just blackness.

I've read criticism of that book being too repetitive, but somehow the repetition of the problems and concerns in the main character's mind were what made it such a powerfully depressing book, to me. It wasn't the best thing for me to read at a time in my life when I was already feeling pretty down in the dumps, but I'd still recommend anyone curious to give it a shot. You'll know fairly early on whether it's a book you'll want to continue reading or not. "Something" eventually does "happen"... it just takes reading almost all of the book before it does.

(I still haven't read Catch-22 but it is high on my list as one to check out in the near future.)

After the friendship, courtship, and hope mixed into the first several hundred pages—BAM!

Maybe that doesn't count as strictly depressing, though. But you end up that way...

got even worse when I had kids... if you read the book you'll know why.

A great book, though, have to say!

Both killer depressing ..

I just finished reading Night by Elie Wiesel, which is giving it a good run for the money in that category.

Just finished it. Pretty depressing story, but lyrically written. Anyone else read this one?

narrator was just completely captivating and heartbreaking at the same time.

Read it in winter for maximum despair.

My copy was one of those mass market classic releases and the cover was silver/grey with a washed out painting in browns and greys. I should've known to run. I like the book but haven't been able to re-read it. It's just so hopeless.

before reading it again. Possibly a decade. :D

That poor little book cover--that's so sad that I just have to laugh at it. I think my copy has a photo of a cathedral, which is also depressing, but not like that.

we read it for our book club and of course we were all depressed by it, but also a little bit annoyed at the main characters. We concluded that they were the type who would never have fit in, not in any time, or any place. They were simply unlikeable. We decided that society ostracized them not for their ideals, but for their obnoxious personalities.

that was pretty depressing - I don't know how closely it followed the book.
I saw the movie because I like Kate Winslett.

I wanted to jump in the book and slap Sue around for being such a douche bag. And Jude, get some freakin' balls...

The Macbeth of the 20th century. I was depressed for a week after I finished that book.

Mz Pip
:dem:

Anyway, I agree--it's a great and depressing piece of writing. Damn you, Jane Smiley!

Three daughters, dividing up the kingdom, etc.

That was the first, and last, novel I read by Jane Smiley.

It felt so final I actually thought it was the final book after my first read-through, even with all the loose ends.

It's about a family of fishermen whose very name means 'the unlucky ones'. It was written at the height of naturalism, and it beats even Amalie Skram for sheer depression. Anything that can go wrong for the members of this family, goes wrong. I had to read it in college - I've studied literature in 3 different languages at college level, and I did French in high school, but that book has everything beat.

Maybe unbearably sad is a better description than depressing. At the end I was cursing Tess for
being stupid, and crying my eyes out over her fate. I think it's a Hardy thing - none of his novels
could possibly be described as even remotely happy.

Also Bleak House by Dickens - in all his books, you don't remember who got married and lived happily
ever after, it's those who suffered and died who stay with you. Bleak House has to be one of the
saddest - poor Jo had the deck stacked against him from birth, like so many poor children of the
time, but the wealthy Lady Dedlock was just as trapped in the system, losing both her great love and
her child because of society's rigid rules of behaviour and complete intolerance of any deviation
from them.

Watch for it on PBS. (Of course, Matilda, I realize that you're in Australia, but U.S.-based DUers should know about it.)

most depressing book I've ever read.

That might be darker than Jude the Obscure.

I was like, "Can't you give this woman a break all ready?"

I don't think I'll ever re-read that one.

by Nevil Shute.

Saw both movies. Listened to the audiobook.

Is there any more depressing scenario in the world?

I grew up in the nuclear holocaust/armageddon/doomsday era of the 60s, so I guess I have a morbid fascination with the topic.

The difference is, when I was younger, the emphasis was on "fascination". Now it's on "morbid".

Hope we've learned something in the intervening decades, but - sorry to say - I doubt it.

It depressed the hell out of me, at any rate. Perhaps it was empathy for the protaganist, but I ended up weepy at the end. I dunno.

jesus christ, it's worse than "jude the obscure"

"oryx and crake" by margaret atwood is almost as bad

all good books, altho of the 3, i think the boyle book is actually the weakest (i like him better at the shorter length) but crap yes they are all books to read on a gloomy rainy day when you want to wallow in your existential despair

hope for the Children of Crake there at the end...until some homo sapiens turned up.

It was touching, as well.

I can't stop thinking about it now. I can tell it's going to be one of those books that stays with me forever.

I kept hoping life would get better for the family, but instead it got worse and worse. Total bummer.

(back when there was a Jr High)

never forgot it...images imprinted on my brainpan. Man!!!

made me a vegetarian!

Although I'm sure part of its depressiveness and nihilism was due to its anti-Semitic, Nazi-sympathizing author.

Brilliant book, though...

Brilliant book but very sad. Still, how the people are treated when they succumb to this condition shows how humans can still discriminate.

http://www.amazon.com/Blindness-Harvest-Book-Jose-Saramago/dp/0156007754/sr=8-1/qid=1167230711/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-6537742-6659144?ie=UTF8&s=books

But it was excellent too.

I read it because of the writing style, Frank McCourt is just a pure joy. But the story, oh my god, I had to put it down several times because I just couldn't take another second of these people's agony.

I couldn't bear to read either one.

depressed me for weeks.

Many other good nominations already offered. On the Beach, A Child Called It, Crime and Punishment, Sophie's Choice, Children of the Flames.

get over it. Incredibly dark work.

the heck out of me:

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant (disclaimer: I looked that spelling up!)

There are others, but I just finished this and it's fresh in my mind. What a downer!

There was a bit of hope at the very end. But, the rest is grim, grim, and grim.
"The Road" made "Blood Meridian" seem like "Blazing Saddles".

by Malcolm Lowry. Yeesh.

God, that was depressing. :cry:

it kind of destroys your faith and hope for the human race

The big money interests crush and corrupt everything. Written about the years between the wars, but primarily the years leading up to and into the Great Depression. People getting rich quick and then losing everything.

"It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe."

Camus was killed in an auto accident

I always take that last paragraph of The Stranger to be Meursault, at last, recognizing the beauty of life:

I remember another quote from Camus, though not from The Stranger:

"Thus I progressed on the surface of life, in the realm of words as it were, never in reality. All those books barely read, those friends barely loved, those cities barely visited, those women barely possessed! I went through the gestures out of boredom or absent-mindedness. Then came human beings; they wanted to cling, but there was nothing to cling to, and that was unfortunate--for them. As for me, I forgot. I never remembered anything but myself."

However, the realization that hope is an illusion is liberating. From The Myth of Sisyphus:



Even Meursault sitting in his prison cell, awaiting execution, finds happiness.

I agree that the lack of hope can be depressing. But, my reading of Camus is that we should rebel against that lack of hope. Embrace life and find what happiness we can.

BTW, I think your last quote is from The Fall and the speaker is Jean-Baptiste Clamence.

March by Geraldine Brooks
Roses From The Earth. The Biography of Anne Frank

By James Morrow. http://www.amazon.com/This-World-Ends-James-Morrow/dp/0156002086

I could tell it was going to hit way too close to home.

I made an excuse to not lend it to a friend that I thought it "too" relevant to. I also thought it was way too relevant to my own life. And now you feel the same. I think it turned the Tolstoy saying "Happy familes are all alike" inside out. That's why it's a work of genius.

written by JN Stroyar. It's an alternative history book in which the Nazis conquered all of Europe because America followed an isolationist policy and never joined WW2. As a result, Europe has turned just what Hitler, Himmler et al envisioned: a society with a master, privileged race and various subservient classes. It has the single most horrifying episode that I've ever read in fiction.

I highly recommend the book, however. It is a 1,000+ page novel written as a first work by a female nuclear physicist. There is also a sequel. When done, you'll develop a truer sense of gratitude to the Allied forces who stopped these miscreants, because of the image of what the Nazis would have created had they succeeded.

by Jerzy Kosinski

down down down down down down down down down down down down down

and down

Still, I liked it.

> The gang rape on horseback

> Falling in the rat hole

> Dead and wounded Jews scattered beside the railroad track

> The eye plucking, eye stomping scene

All this through the eyes of a child. I can't remember one positive aspect of that book, but still beautifully written.

that book effected me. I've read lots of sad ones...but to be trapped in that kid's mind...ugh.

I suppose my first choice would be The Rising Sun by John Toland. My grandfather (who worked for the US Army as a translator)had family who were on the other side in the Pacific War. He lost both his brothers...one on Iwo Jima and the other on Leyte. He also lost all his male cousins too...I don't know the circumstances. It's heartbreaking to read because of that, and because war always seems like it could be avoided. So many people in Asia and Japan suffered untold horrors because of pride and avarice.

My second choice is All God's Children by Butterfield. It's about this African-American family who's had a long line of 'highly intelligent malefactors'. The center of the story is a man named Willie Bosket and his father Butch who both ended up becoming murderers. Though I was never as troubled as Willie, but I could relate to that toxic combination of almost suicidal despair combined with a great deal of anger. I've noticed that when I've read bios of murderers that there was a missed opportunity to help them before they passed the point of no return and shed blood. In Bosket's case, he was sent to a halfway house in his neighborhood and just went AWOL even though he was clearly dangerous.Having struggled with a possibly borderline personality while a teen, I always thought that if my life circumstances had been harder then I could have gone down the same road. =(

My third is a book called City of the Dead by Brian Keene. Its a sequel to a book called The Rising. Basically both books are about a sort of 'Night of the Living Dead' scenario.In this case, the zombies are corpses possessed by demons. They can fire weapons and plan attacks. I won't give it away, but the ending of City of the Dead left me feeling depressed and scared.

I've read a bunch of his books.The Rising Sun,No Man's Land:1918 - The Last Year of the Great War (the one that I found very depressing),In Mortal Combat:Korea 1950-1953,and Battle:The Story of the Bulge.

All are excellent,especially for war history buffs.

The Rising and City of the Dead sound right up my alley so I'll have to look for those.

Welcome to DU!

:toast:

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.

It is very depressing. I usually don't cry reading books. The movie version is coming out in March 2009.

I read it when I was a child. When I finished, I was crying my eyes out. I put it away and never looked at it again.

when Beauty ended up at a very nice home and was attended to by his old boy groom, now all grown up.

It's quite a faithful adaptation of the book.

My wife made me stop reading it halfway through book 2 because I kept having nightmares...

Unbearably depressing and an incredible achievement.

I don't know if it was where I was at or if the book is a total bummer, but I had to set it aside. That was 20 years ago...

Edit to change.

That book still gives me the shivers!!

A modernized version of King Lear. I was depressed for weeks after reading it.

was damn depressing.

But I won't read Hardy's "Jude the Obscure" or see the film, even though I would probably find it interesting, because of what I know happens to the children.

I can't get into anything John Irving writes. Too depressing.

The book itself is like the ultimate jest video in that it is too fascinating and induces a state of anhedonia. A jest that doesn't stop or start but leaves you helpless.

A beauty of emptiness mind bomb that penetrates the brain through the yearning human eye.

I read the book, and then saw the movie with my spouse. It's definitely not a date night kind of movie. The book was superbly written. Anyone who reads it will recognize the worst aspects of their own personal relationships, however small or large they may be. And it's a commentary of the earliest realities of suburban sprawl and how it can just suck the life out of even the best and brightest of us.

The mistake of thinking that a change of locale is all that's needed for a life bereft of meaning.

I bought the book at the airport while traveling based on the reviews plastered all over it and then was surprised to see how old the book itself was. I had never heard of it.

I have to agree it's depressing. Proto-yuppy couple move to suburbs. Them - "We're special!" Life - "No, you're not."

I really didn't quite know what to make of the sub-plot with the real estate agent's strange son.

the ending was just depressing and made me mad at the same time...