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/lit/ - Literature

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4907282 No.4907282[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

Okay /lit/, give me the saddest book you've read

>> No.4907285

>>4907282
Stoner first, Bell Jar second

>> No.4907292

>>4907285
Why does this board seem to lvoe books about extremely boring people?

>> No.4907295

>>4907282
The Giving Tree, no joke.

>> No.4907307

Gosh, there was this one memoir I read years ago about a girl in the adoption system, about her getting beat and whatnot. It wasn't really that sad but it's all I can think of at the moment. I also got real fucked up by the story of king leopald in the congo. Think it was "king leopalds ghost."

>> No.4907313

It's a tie.

>Journey to the End of the Night
>The Book of Disquiet
>Notes from Underground

>> No.4907328

>>4907313

Oooh gotta love Celine.

>> No.4907350

>>4907282

Miss Lonelyhearts hit my very deeply. Some of those letters are so good at conveying how miserable you can get.

>> No.4907404
File: 249 KB, 408x700, TheAmerican.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4907404

>>4907282
I read this a year ago and I still won't touch another Henry James.

>> No.4907421

Under The Volcano
Stoner
The Stranger

>> No.4907422

I don't know whether I'd call The Bell Jar 'sad', or 'ruthlessly morose'.

Either way, the suicidal drive is infectious.

>> No.4907443 [DELETED] 

I've not read it but an anon once said Women and Men threw them into a weeks long depression.

>> No.4907455

>>4907282
Tolstoy makes me cry like a bitch in all his books, but the books usually have a lot more going on than just sadness so I don't know if you'd count that.

He writes the saddests deaths. Only author that has made me tear up in years of reading.

>> No.4907532

Tuesdays with morrie

>> No.4907587

>>4907282
How was that book sad?
It was just a girl on her period complaining about short guys and gifts. She didn't have a difficult life at all when she was 20. Fucking Christ, just a whiney feminist bitch.

>> No.4907612

>>4907421
Under the Volcano
The Red and the Black
The Fall
Dubliners
Steppenwolf

>> No.4907621

Magic Mountain

>> No.4907626

On the Beach is morbidly depressing just for the idea that the world to the North has ended and you're simply waiting to die from radiation...literally waiting for one of the most awful sicknesses to come and rip you off the planet.

>> No.4907788
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4907788

>>4907350

Am I an edgy faggot if I found Lonelyhearts and Nathanael West in general to be hilarious?

I think the saddest book I ever read was Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion. I also got really into Oryx and Crake like the pleb I am and got all invested and had to take a walk in the forest after reaching the conclusion.

>> No.4909730

John Crowley's Little, Big is pretty goddamn sad. So is William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury

>> No.4909779

>>4907313
>Journey to the End of the Night
This, though it's also hilarious.

>> No.4909863

>>4907282
Wittgenstein's Mistress and The Last Novel, the last because Markson knew he had cancer.

>> No.4909987

I read this book as a child about a boy who finds an alien on the beach one day. The alien is not very well, it seems quite sick. the boy decides to build a rocket for the alien to send him home. At the end of the book he set the rocket to launch. The homemade rocket fires off into space.

The book then reveals the true origin of the "alien". A woman who drank alot during her pregnancy abandoed her deformed child on the beach. That child with fetal alcohol syndrome was the alien. The one who had just been fired into space. The one who had spent his time stuck in a cave being fed by this kid.

>> No.4910316

>>4907292

There are a lot of boring people on the internet.

>> No.4910338

>>4909987
genuinely lolled at this synopsis

>> No.4910364

>>4909987
>A woman who drank alot during her pregnancy abandoed her deformed child on the beach. That child with fetal alcohol syndrome was the alien
For the love of all that is good and holy please tell me the name of this book

>> No.4910416

Sorrow beyond dreams by Handke.

>> No.4910419

ask the dust

>> No.4910684

>>4910364
I wish I can remember. It was a present from an aunt who always got the most random presents.

If I didn't remember it so clearly I would swear I had dreamt it.

>> No.4910726

>>4909987
Time to do some research, i'll be right back.

>> No.4911047

Hard Rain Falling

>> No.4911092

>>4907282
Johnny got his Gun
by Dalton Trumbo

>> No.4912314

>>4907282
I found The Grapes of Wrath almost unbearable. I don't think I could ever read it again. Funny, I didn't think the Bell Jar was that sad.

>> No.4912317

>>4911092
Metallica sucks, you tasteless queer.

>> No.4912319

>>4907587
You try a botched ECT. You'd be whining much more.

>> No.4912381

The complete works of Richard Yates.

>> No.4912786

algernon

>> No.4913699

>>4907282
The waves, Virginia woolf

>> No.4913747

>>4913699
what's sad about it? rhoda's death is barely registered at all, overshadowed by percival's demise, whicch is obscured in purple solipsistic nonsense.

>> No.4915627

when Hudson's kids die in Islands in the Stream, that got me real good

>> No.4915646
File: 165 KB, 640x1097, atlas shrugged.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4915646

>>4907282

>> No.4915657

>>4912317
I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
Did I reference Metallica in some way? Never bought one of their albums, before.

JghG really is a chilling story, though. A read not suited for someone with a weak constitution.

>> No.4915662

>>4913747
>nonsense

>not the best thing ever written

>> No.4915664

>>4907282
The bit at the end where she talks about not knowing if/when the bell jar will descend upon her again is definitely one of the saddest things I've read. It's all too relatable to me, and we know in real life it ended up being something she couldn't escape.

The end of The Road was pretty rough for me, but it didn't have the lingering effect of The Bell Jar. I can't even think about it without getting bummed out.

>> No.4915701

the mayor of casterbridge

>> No.4915727

Cities of the Plain.

The ending is just so bleak, especially considering that each main character got his own book. You get to know these characters, see them go through a bunch of shit and come through it, and then the idealistic cowboy dies because he was idealistically standing up for what amounted to bullshit, and the other character (who had already lost everything and was getting some semblance of purpose back) loses it and left with absolutely nothing.. It's a great way to present a nihilistic view on life and critique the convention of the American hero, but goddamn, it's sad.

>> No.4915878

>>4907282
Night - Elie weisel

>> No.4915911

HMS Ulysses. It's a great war novel, completely unlike anything else Alastair McLean ever wrote. It's set on the Arctic convoy route from Britain to the USSR, and you get to see just how merciless and cruel the war at sea could be. You experience so much with the crew, and watch them overcome amazing odds, only to see every single one of them die screaming.

>> No.4916677

>>4909779
That's part of why it's so sad, Ferdinand is very easy to relate to, and his humour is very bittersweet.

>> No.4916741

>>4915878
no
ultimate shit
why do people like this absolute crap
the prose is shit, and the plot boils down to "the holocaust happened"
great really enlightening elie thanks for writing that
nobel prize winner.. disgusting

>> No.4916999

>>4915657
Metallica wrote a shitty song inspired by the film, to which I'm fairly sure they now own the rights.

>> No.4917030
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4917030

>>4907282
>yfw it's non-fiction

>> No.4917031

THE NOTEBOOK, THE PROOF, THE THIRD LIE

OBJECTIVELY THE SADDEST BOOKS YOU WILL EVER READ.

>> No.4917038

>>4907313
this man knows about feels

>> No.4917039

The Bell Jar hit me hard, because I initially unconsciously associated myself with Buddy and various depressed people I care about in my life with Plath-stand-in, which as the book went on made me feel like I was being as shitty about it as Buddy was (regardless of whether or not I really was).

Apart from that, though, part two of To the Lighthouse was heavy. The casual parentheticals announcing each death were harsh af.

>> No.4917072

>>4915662
sorry, not a pleb m8. but what's sad about it?

>> No.4917136

>>4917030
I'm going with this one.

>> No.4917178
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4917178

> The Egyptian not mentioned
Well, I need to correct this.

>> No.4917183

That fucking kids book about the Daemons and the Subtle Knife, the main characters were Will and Lyra

holy shit I cried so much when i finished that book, i was like 11 but still

>> No.4917233

>>4917178
While The Egyptian is sad, at least you have someone to identify with.

In The Roman you have sadder stories but nobody to cry with. Now that's devastating.

>> No.4917299

A Scanner Darkly.

>> No.4917303
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4917303

"Bréviaire du chaos" by Albert Caraco.