SO many books are sad - Deathly Hallows, Tuck Everlasting, but the saddest has to be The Amber Spyglass
Probably the most depressing book I've ever read was The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. I did not know that the feelings this novel created in me would linger for more than a month after I had finished reading it. I probably wouldn't have read it if I knew it'd make me feel that way. This was way back in high school, and I wasn't even in a terrible funk then, and still it wounded me, and still continues wounding me everytime I (due to some sort of early dementia) decide to blow off the dust and spread out the pages again.
So far the only one that made me feel sad that I've read was Less Than Zero. The way the book left you with an empty feeling was really... different. I liked it though, and it's the main inspiration for the novel I'm working on, especially since Bret Easton Ellis was the same age as me, 19, when he wrote it.
You should read The Informers, his book of short stories. It has the same mood as Less than Zero but its like concentrated into a lot of short stories....its so emotionally draining to read because the characters are so vacuous and the writing so powerful....but yeah, all his books are great.
The saddest book that I've ever read has to be Lovely Bones by Alice Seabold. The last line in the book is just so sweet and sad
I have cried at a lot of books. Can't really remember all of them at the moment.. Stephen King's Cujo definitely made me cry. I still have issues with that book. I have a hardcore soft spot for animals, and that story was just heartbreaking all around. The Silence of The Lambs made me cry a LOT. I could really relate to the whole redemption for screwed up stuff from childhood theme.. even the movie makes me cry sometimes. (Btw, damn what a story, that has to be one of my favorite stories of all time, both the film and the book). I also cried writing parts of my own book, lolololol.
Definitely! I'm so excited, well, a little worried too, to see where the characters from LTZ are today.
One of the saddest books I've read has got to be Atonement.. you're just left feeling incomplete.. mainly because that's how the characters must feel.. it's an amazing piece of writing though.. and the film really did it justice, surprisingly!
Man, I think everyone felt like that at the end. What got me most was when Jake and Eddie buy it. I shed a tear for Eddie, but Jake had me literally crying. The Things They Carried was a hard read for me, but when you have grown up with a Nam veteran for a father, I think all things about that war are hard reads. Same deal with All Quiet on the Western Front. I think that the saddest book I ever read, though, and the one that stays with me the most is A Farewell To Arms, by Hemingway. That last scene breaks my heart, although, like Hemingway, I have too much testosterone in my system to admit it most of the time. Though I wouldn't call it the saddest thing I've ever read, The World According to Garp was such a melancholy story and I was actually really down all the time in the week it took me to read it.
I don't think I've ever been as emotionally affected by a book as I was by the end of the Amber Spyglass. I was young though. Other than that childhood experience, I dunno about saddest. That's not the same as most emotionally affecting.
this Dutch book called Kappen was the saddest I have ever read I believe. And Forest of Hands and Teeth. It wasn't one of the saddest out there, but it had it's share.
Atonement! I sobbed and sobbed, then I saw the movie and sobbed even more, one of the best book to movie adaptations I've seen too I might add
The Giving Tree. It seems awfully cynical and misanthropic for a childrens' book. I'm sure there's some positive message about generosity tucked in there somewhere, but that's not the impression it had on me at the age of five...
I couldn't agree more. Somehow, still, I have a fondness for that book. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards was absolutely devestating. Here’s a spoiler: so don’t read this if you intend to read the book: That one choice led the main character inexorably down a path of pain. The most hurtful to me what the ruin of his marriage (probably because I read it a few weeks after getting married and I found the concept terrifying). Even after his death, so many people were angry with him. Such a legacy made me cry. I read this book as quickly as possible, all in one go, just to make it stop. It was very similar to The Kite Runner in that regard: one choice = horrible consequences.
It depends, but one of the saddest and most beautiful books I've read is Wide Sargasso Sea... and also Good Morning, Midnight, by the same author, Jean Rhys. Both novels are poetic, beautifully written, and devoid of hope... full of sad destinies. Rhys writes from a feminist perspective; sometimes that's easy to relate to, but the reason I like these novels is the language...
1984? Gulliver's Travels? The endings are pretty similar...both say that humans are worthless, stupid, easily broken, (insert other negative adjectives here)...
I read this old, Dutch book (title doesn't really matter, cause I'm pretty sure none of you knows it) and at the end (a sad end) I just cried and cried and stayed crying, I simply couldn't stop...
