The saddest books ever.

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The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Damned Strong Love
The beginning and middle of Dombey and Son

Submit your own.

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is more disturbing than sad, but it is sad in the fact that Winston is completely destroyed as a person by Miniluv- the Winston that was is gone by the end of the ordeal.

Other than that, though, I don't read any sad books.

Perhaps there are not sad books. Real human life is sad and hollow, and books depicting this sadnesse ar also ways to fight or exorcize this sadness.
Once I have said this I would cite these books:
Madame Bovary, by Flaubert
End of the Road, by John Barth
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford
The original title of this last novel should have been The Saddest story. The publisher objecte to this title whiche woul not have promoted is sales. Ford wire ironically to the publisher: "Then why not 'The Good Soldier". The publisher didn't understand the sarcasm and used that title.

I dunno why, but the ending of the last book in Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series depressed me, it is the worst fate imaginable.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Sad, sad, sad.

Kris

Lonesome Dove-Larry McMurtry

Goodness! If I wasn't just counting the ones I actually finished. . .

'Lovely Bones' by Alice Sebold

'The Giver' by Lois Lowry

- 'And I Don't Want to Live This Life: A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder' by Deborah Spungen **The book is about the murder of Nancy Spungen, the girlfriend of punk rocker Sid Vicious***


Of these three, 'Lovely Bones' was the saddest book I ever read that had a happy ending, 'The Giver' actually made me cry, and 'I Don't Want to Live This Life...' was so sad because the girl's mother (who wrote the book) actually seemed to despise her daughter so much that the pages almost dripped with unrequited hatred.

The only book that has ever made me sad was Tilly Mint and the Dodo by Berlie Doherty, and that was years ago. I love Dodos.

Last edited by Aridarr on 02 Mar 2008, 8:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Where the Red Fern Grows
Old Yeller (you thought the movie was sad?)
Number the Stars

I thought the "child called it" and "lost boy" by David Peltzer were the saddest books I've read, I actually cried reading them.

Narnia. The part where the witch stabs the sweet lion, Aslan.

Matthew, by Mary Crosby-an Englishwoman's memior of her son, who had Down Syndrome. I've read quite a few uplifting stories about people with DS. Unfortunately, this wasn't one of them. This boy was born in 1964, before they knew how early intervention could help children with DS. Much of it took place in dreary institutional settings as well. Matthew ultimately passed away of heart failure in 1989.

I've read these books too... very sad.

Man, I have to say, the one that ALWAYS gets me down is "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." I sort of hated that book because it just made me feel like s**t.

Really, though, the most depressing books for me tend to be nonfiction and about the state of the world--politics and what not.

Agreed. My favourite character (Sirius) dies in the book, and so I reallyreallyreallyreallyreallyreally dislike that book

The saddest books I've read (which I loved, but sad all the same. It's good to cry with a book sometimes) are "The Girl Death Left Behind", which is a book about a girl who loses her whole family (Mom, Dad, and two siblings) in a car crash, and the books "Somewhere Between Life and Death" and "Time to Let Go", which are also in a combination book called "the End of Forever". That one is about a sister's choice to let her younger sister off life support and how she tries to move on.