Most Depressing Goddam Books EVER.

[Eve]

Originally Posted by cichlidiot

Camille - Alexandre Dumas, fils

Love that book. Another one that shocks people who've seen the movie versions and are expecting a Grand Romance.

[Mal Adroit]

Originally Posted by Finagle

I'd nominate Boys and Girls Together by William Goldman. And most of his other non-thriller novels aren't too upbeat either.

Thing of It Is ends kinda nicely, doesn't it (two happy people boffing)? Father's Day, Color of Light, The Silent Gondoliers all turn out okay. . . I'd agree with you, though, that he loves to torment his characters.

Would second most of the noir picks, especially Jim Thompson. Criminy, Savage Night ends with all the civility and logic of William Burroughs describing his night sweats.

Mother Night just killed me.
Can't actually remember how J.M. Coetzee's Life and Times of Michael K. ended, but the book was so unrelentingly bleak that I think I was numb by the time I got there.

I don't know, Eve, sometimes I think depressing books actually just make you feel lousy!

[Dung Beetle]

Originally Posted by furryman

5. A Series Of Unfortunate Events By Lemony Snicket. I know he's trying for black humor here. But in my opinion he's completely misses the mark. Just plain depressing.

Wow, furryman. My kids and I love love love these books! The kids actually recite bits out loud. Maybe it's because we're listening to the audio version, which is an incredible performance by Tim Curry.

[violacrane]

Another vote for Thomas Hardy here, as well as the aforementioned Jude and Tess there's The Woodlanders, in which an ugly poor girl with beautiful hair is in love with the same man as a beautiful rich girl with bad hair. I stopped reading at the point where ugly girl sells her hair which is made into a wig for beautiful girl who then gets the man.

Most depressing children'd books -- Elyne Mitchell's Silver Brumby series in which terrible things happen to wild horses, especially the ones you got fond of in previous books. After weeping my way through the all the ones in my local library I have rarely cried over a book since, which is some kind of a result I suppose.

[SkipMagic]

In Cold Blood - Truman Capote

[Eve]

Originally Posted by violacrane

. . . there's The Woodlanders, in which an ugly poor girl with beautiful hair is in love with the same man as a beautiful rich girl with bad hair. I stopped reading at the point where ugly girl sells her hair which is made into a wig for beautiful girl who then gets the man.

Maybe it's the mood I'm in—or maybe I'm just mean—but I fell out of my chair laughing when I read that.

Like when my friend Michael was describing this movie plot that had him crying his eyes out, and when he ended with, " . . . and then his Seeing-Eye Dog got cancer," I nearly wet my pants.

[SkipMagic]

Oh, and a few assorted fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen. No wonder children were depressed in the 19th century. (I know they're short tales, and not strictly books, but I have them in a book, so that should count for something.)

[Darkhold]

The Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock. Anyone the main character loves or befriends is dead meat. Sooner rather then later usually and probably in a pretty horrific manner.

The ending manages a new level of this

SPOILER:

His last friend and the only one that's survived all the books throws himself on Elrics sword in order to feed Elric enough life force to blow some horn. His last words are something like "oh this is worse then I thought" as his soul is sucked from him. Elric then blows the horn his sword transforms into a demon that mocks him while Elric dies in the grass.

Just lovely. I wanted to slit my wrists after reading that crap.

[Mr. Slant]

If we're going to talk stories for kids... I'll nominate Bridge to Terrabithia . Oh my fricking God, I stayed in a funk for about 3 days after I finished reading that.

[jellytoes]

A few that haven't been mentioned:

Wuthering Heights, I love this book but it just sickens me how sad the story is.

Blindness by Jose Saramago, this book was literally painful to read. The most horrible part about it is that you know the whole time that if the situation were real, we would actually act that way. It took me a long time to read it. I had to keep putting it down and come back to it when the black fog had lifted. I think he won some sort of literary prize for it.

Maus by Art Spiegelman, beautiful and horrifying. This book touched me deeply.

[luluBahrain]

I have to agree with Rabid Child about The Long Walk . It is my most favorite book ever but I cannot read it very often. It just haunts me because I could actually see something like that happening.

[Colibri]

I'll have to nominate Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn.

from Amazon:

Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out–with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes–to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There’s Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious–and dangerous–asset.

As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.

I have a pretty high tolerance for outre literature, but this is the kind of book that really makes you want to scrub all the skin off your body after you finish.

[The Man With The Golden Gun]

I'll nominate Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. Long sad story about a guy named Ethan Frome who is in a loveless relationship with a hypochrondriac. He then falls in love with her teenage cousin, and they

SPOILER:

try to commit suicide by, and I am NOT making this up, crashing a sled into a tree. Ethan ends up crippled, and the teenage girl is paralyzed.

Unlike most of the other books mentioned in this thread, I can't recommend this ass splotch of a book. I'm never going to touch it again, and I'm making it my life's purpose to completely destroy any memory of this book. I would rather stick my privates in a vise than even look at the cover of this book again.

[Mr. Blue Sky]

A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving

You know the poor kid is doomed from the first page and yet you are compelled to suffer along with him.

Now that I think about, everything by Irving is depressing.

[TeaElle]

I'll second Wuthering Heights, which depressed me so badly I couldn't finish it, and add:

The Partner - John Grisham
Ceremony of the Innocent - Taylor Caldwell &
The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

[Rhiannon8404]

Originally Posted by The Man With The Golden Gun

I'll nominate Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton...

Unlike most of the other books mentioned in this thread, I can't recommend this ass splotch of a book. I'm never going to touch it again, and I'm making it my life's purpose to completely destroy any memory of this book. I would rather stick my privates in a vise than even look at the cover of this book again.

Ugh! This one is the worst! We had to read it junior year of high school. Everyone hated it and our teacher couldn't understand why. I haven't even thought of it in years. I believe I had completely destroyed any memory of the book until you mentioned it. It might be the most awful book I had to read.

[Katisha]

Originally Posted by wmulax93

Hamlet. C'mon, how has this not been mentioned yet?

King Lear is tons more depressing, though. (I love it anyway.)

Wilfred Owen's poetry is relentlessly bleak, though I love that too -- really, anything to do with World War I is incredibly depressing.

Oh, and count me into the Ethan Frome-hating club. I loathed that book with a passion.

[the Lady]

Thank you Colibri - I've been trying to remember the name of that book forever. Ick, ick and more ick.

I found War and Peace to be moderately depressing, aside from the annoying fact that it just ends, no resolution or anything.
Anna Karenina is deeply depressing at the end. It's practically a one-liner about the fate of the daughter, but it's awful.

matt_mcl I remember reading that in junior high as well. Nice, no?

Don't get me started on Bridge to Terabithia

Eve, have you ever read Civilization by Paul Quarrington? I suspect you might find it interesting...

[Graycat]

I'll second both of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever by Stephen Donaldson, but I found his Gap series even more depressing; I only made it through the first two and have no idea how low things got by the end.

I also found most things by Vonnegut pretty darned depressing; but for some reason I kept reading them. And so it goes.

[Odesio]

The World According to Garp was a pretty damn despressing read. It ended on such a down note.

Marc

[FriarTed]

can't believe I'm the first to mention Dalton Trumbo's JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN (tho the movie is even more depressing- at least at the end of the book, he had a dream! Oh btw, an album pf classic radio broadcasts I got has a 1940s James Cagney dramatization of it- Wow!)

[sinjin]

The Lovely Bones made me weep continuously.

Second Silenos for On the Beach. That one really blew me away when I was a teen-ager growing up in the seventies. The movie was a killer too with, I think, Fred Astair, if you can believe it.

But I actually liked Anna Kerenina and War and Peace (maybe because I read this one while on vacation on Maui, am I a nerd or what?). My favorite part about W & P is Tolstoy's description of battle which basically describes the butterfly theory of chaos. Did any one else notice that?

[sinjin]

Oh and I forgot; why oh, why did they make us read "A Separate Peace" by John Knowles in high school? That and "Ethan Fromme" and "Great Expectations" put me off on "LITERATURE" for decades.

[Atreyu]

Postcards by Annie Proulx.

Pass the hemlock, please.

[Syntropy]

Almost forgot: The Sweet Hereafter. My son read it for school and walked around looking shell shocked for an entire weekend.

[snermy]

The Dwarf Par Lagerkvist

Ick ick ick. Powerful, but with a nasty taste to it. Left it half convinced that all people everywhere are just evil and sordid and small.

You've heard the saying 'power corrupts'? This is more 'people are corrupt, period. Everyone's a puerile torturer at heart, and what separates the idly murderous despot from the kiddies pulling wings off flies is only their amount of power'.
And then of course there's the Plague because it's just not depressing enough without seeping buboes everywhere.

Read it almost 20 years ago and it's still the most visceral reaction I've ever had to a book.

[snermy]

Originally Posted by furryman

1.The Book of Sorrows By Kurt Wagner
This is a sequel to "The Book of the Dun Cow" if you liked this book my advice to you is avoid "The Book of Sorrows" like the plague. [SNIPPED]
Actually, there was one book I read that was even more depressing than "The Book of Sorrows". I don't remember the title, but it was a book of short fantasy
stories about Native Americans.

OH yes. Book of Sorrows made me bawl.

The short stories sounds like Ursula Leguin's Buffalo Gals.

[Fionn]

I haven't read any of the detective novels or classics, but I can vouch for the depressing nature of Burmese Days, Catch-22 and A Prayer for Owen Meany, and add At Swim, Two Boys. Has anyone else read the latter? One of the saddest endings I've ever read.

[Hyperelastic]

I cast a fifth vote for Jude the Obscure. First you read it, then you jump off a bridge.

[Loopus]

The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain. The world is inherently irrational and the only way to be happy is to be completely insane. Great...

[kalex]

I have to mention Michner's Poland. 1000 f-ing years of conquest, rape, murder, torture and depravation. Nothing good ever happened in Poland.

And Garp was no walk in the park. As they were coming down the driveway, with the headlights off, I was all like, Oh no you di-int!
But he did.

[Wendell Wagner]

_The Book of Sorrows_ is by Walter Wangerin, Jr.

[chique]

Originally Posted by FriarTed

can't believe I'm the first to mention Dalton Trumbo's JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN ....

I read Johnny Got His Gun right after I finished Run Silent, Run Deep.

The denouement of the latter? An American submarine avoids a Soviet submarine because the American sub just heard another American sub die.

*shudder*

[Dr. Rieux]

Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy.

[Paul in Qatar]

What about the short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream?

Also Taylor's History of the First World War

[Old Goat]

Dennis Lehane's Mystic River
I read mysteries because the resolution reafirms a sense of order in the world.
But this one leaves you feeling worse. When the initial kliing is solved, you realize you had all the information from the very start. But the real tragedy is how all the characters are trapped within their own self and how that forces the subsequent events. I'm sure Clint Eastwood does a wonderful job with the movie, but I don't think it will ever give me the profound sense of dis-ease as the book.

[Rick]

Originally Posted by chique

I read Johnny Got His Gun right after I finished Run Silent, Run Deep.

The denouement of the latter? An American submarine avoids a Soviet submarine because the American sub just heard another American sub die.

*shudder*

Run Silent, Run Deep takes place in the Pacific during WWII, when to the best of my knowledge Russia did not have any subs. The advasery in RSRD was "Bungo Pete" a Japaneese Destroyer skipper. From the Amazon review of Dust on the Sea (1st sequal to RSRD)

"Run" ends with Richardson executing the crew of Pete's ship - presumbly including Pete himself, knowing that Pete will remain a danger as long as he's alive.

IIRC correctly Dust on the Sea ends with an American sub sinking, both torpedo rooms flooding, no way to surface, and the sinking sub still in contact with Rich Richardson's boat.
::: Rick wanders off to his bookcase:::

[Marley23]

You know the poor kid is doomed from the first page and yet you are compelled to suffer along with him.

AND DEAL WITH ALL OF IRVING'S MEANDERING CRAP!

I wasn't an Ethan Frome fan either.

[PookahMacPhellimey]

Originally Posted by jellytoes

Blindness by Jose Saramago, this book was literally painful to read. The most horrible part about it is that you know the whole time that if the situation were real, we would actually act that way. It took me a long time to read it. I had to keep putting it down and come back to it when the black fog had lifted. I think he won some sort of literary prize for it.

Absolutely! And you're spot on about what's the most depressing about it. It's an incredible book and I would recommend it to everyone, but know what you're getting yourself into.

I'm not sure if Saramago won a prize for this book in particular as well, but he won the nobel prize for literature not too long ago.

[Annie-Xmas]

Originally Posted by MGibson

The World According to Garp was a pretty damn despressing read. It ended on such a down note.

Marc

I thought about mentioning Garp and John Irving in general, but his books are too goddam funny to be really depressing. He catches the utter absurbity and uselessness of the individual life, yet also the idea that people should still live their lives to the fullest.

Because in the World According to Garp, we are all terminal cases.

"The Green Mile" by Stephen King ends up with everyone dead except the narrator.

[plnnr]

OK, I'm done thinking about Annette Benning in "The Grifters."

My contribution: Billy Budd

[Mal Adroit]

Originally Posted by Dr. Rieux

Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy.

Yow. Thank you for spurring my memory, Dr. Recently read a novel based on or inspired by Wisconsin Death Trip- Stewart O'Nan's A Prayer for the Dying. Gee, but that was a fun one!

SPOILER:

Small-town sherriff watches his entire town drop dead one-by-one of a plague--including his wife and infant daughter, both of whom he keeps dressed and snuggles with long after they're dead and his mind is gone--only to discover at the novel's conclusion that he was the asymptomatic carrier and singlehandedly infected everyone.

I would not have thought it possible to portray as much death and catastrophically bad luck in a story, but to his credit, the author does it in an extremely unhistrionic way. Just one horror piling on top of another in quiet, stripped-down prose. You close the book feeling like someone just punched you in the chest.

[CalMeacham]

Charter Member Join Date: Apr 1999
Posts: 2,144
Location: Yon Mountains


Oh, and a few assorted fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen. No wonder children were depressed in the 19th century. (I know they're short tales, and not strictly books, but I have them in a book, so that should count for something.)

Hans Christian Anderson is massively depressing -- he gave his fairy tales depressibng endings even when there was no obvious reason to -- it's not like he was retelling traditional stories, he was making these up. Why, for instance, do the Steadfast Tin Soldier and his ballerina have to die in the fireplace after overcoming all their obstacles? Or the Little Mermaid see her hoped-for romance go down in flames after all her travails. I'm actually glad Disney changed the endings on these to happy ones, because Anderson's seem so arbitrary and artificial! And don't get me started on The Little Match Girl....

My favorite part about W & P is Tolstoy's description of battle which basically describes the butterfly theory of chaos. Did any one else notice that?

Actually, the part I like about Tolstoy's description of the battles and histopry is his describing it in mathematical terms -- he sees history as a "calculus" which integrates the "differentials" (people) together to get a grand sum. It's actually a sort of Statistical Mechanics view of History, kinda like Isaac Asimov's Psychohistory. Asimov's "Foundation" series was supposed to be inspired by Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but I wonder if he didn't lift this part from Tolstoy.
But, I dunno, despite all the death and destruction, I don't find War and Peace anywhere near as depressing as the other things in this thread!


Other depressing books:

A Death in the Family by James Agee. Had to read it in high school. It's about what the title says, and is interminable.

The Beast in the Jungle -- Henry James. I've found Henry James incredibly tough going. He writes super-compound sentences that go on for days, and cover several pages. His novels are incomparably slow-moving and dull. The title of this one gives you some hope, but it's bait-and-switch. It's a metaphorical Beast. This is a novel in which Nothing Happens. The whole point of it is that Nothing Happens. But it takes so damned long to not happen!

The Death of Ivan Ilych -- Tolstoy (I think) I once saw a cartoon entitled "Despondent Russian Novelist Committing Suicide by Leaping from atop his Suicide Note". Perfect illustration for this one, about a Russian slowly dying of a stomach injury. Very shortly after you start it, you find yourself favoring the idea of Assisted Suicide.

[Neidhart]

I'd like to nominate Fight Club. An unrelieved descent into chaos, anarchy and madness.

[Knowed Out]

Franz Kafka's The Trial. The protagonist is indicted for a crime, and his accusers never tell him what he supposedly did. He spends the rest of the book trying to deal with soulless bureaucrats who won't budge an inch because it's not in their job description. Distopia.

[SkipMagic]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

Hans Christian Anderson is massively depressing -- he gave his fairy tales depressibng endings even when there was no obvious reason to -- it's not like he was retelling traditional stories, he was making these up. Why, for instance, do the Steadfast Tin Soldier and his ballerina have to die in the fireplace after overcoming all their obstacles? Or the Little Mermaid see her hoped-for romance go down in flames after all her travails. I'm actually glad Disney changed the endings on these to happy ones, because Anderson's seem so arbitrary and artificial! And don't get me started on The Little Match Girl....

Depressing, yep. But when I was a suburbanite, middle-class kid and I read these for the first time, I was just stunned. I had no idea that fairy tales could be written like this; I just assumed everything was Disneyfied. True, you had books such as Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia and Smith's A Taste of Blackberries, but the overall theme for those sad books were somewhat uplifting in that they implied hope and personal healing. Not Andersen's tales: his were raw and bleak (stories such as The Ugly Duckling, The Snow Queen, and Little Claus and Big Claus aside).

I suppose Andersen wrote that way in some of his stories because he led a fairly unhappy life himself, filled with unrequited loves and much ridicule as a child. Life wasn't Disney for him, and it obviously came across in his writings. Good stuff. Not always happy stuff, but good stuff.

[Eve]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

Hans Christian Anderson is massively depressing -- he gave his fairy tales depressibng endings even when there was no obvious reason to -- it's not like he was retelling traditional stories, he was making these up. Why, for instance, do the Steadfast Tin Soldier and his ballerina have to die in the fireplace after overcoming all their obstacles? Or the Little Mermaid see her hoped-for romance go down in flames after all her travails. I'm actually glad Disney changed the endings on these to happy ones, because Anderson's seem so arbitrary and artificial! And don't get me started on The Little Match Girl...

Omigod, I couldn't disagree more—I loved Andersen's depressing endings! The whole point of The Little Mermaid was that she gave up her life and her chance at a soul in order to make the man she loved happy with his new bride, and he never even knew it! I've never seen the Disney version and never want to.

[Spoke]

I've a few:

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers - suicide, racism, depression, loneliness. Fun stuff!

A lot of Hemingway's books end on down notes, e.g. The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Then there's the Bible. There's a lot of boody murder and wrath of God, and then, well, I don't want to spoil the ending, but let's just say it involves a fiery pit and a lot of gnashing of teeth. Hoo boy!

[Agrippina]

Originally Posted by Colibri

I'll have to nominate Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn.

I have a pretty high tolerance for outre literature, but this is the kind of book that really makes you want to scrub all the skin off your body after you finish.

I love Geek Love. It's one of my favorite books. But yeah, it's pretty depressing. To me, the most depressing part is the life of poor Chick.

[CalMeacham]

Omigod, I couldn't disagree more—I loved Andersen's depressing endings! The whole point of The Little Mermaid was that she gave up her life and her chance at a soul in order to make the man she loved happy with his new bride, and he never even knew it! I've never seen the Disney version and never want to.

The Little Mermaid I can understand -- we've all felt that way at some point, and I suppose it's cathartic. And I have to admit that Disney changing it bothered me somewhat. But the sad ending on The Steadfast Tin Soldier has always bothered me as incredibly gratuitous unhappiness. It's not set up or implied in the previous story, and seems as if tacked on just to make the ending sad. It's like that hypothetical SF story that L. Sprague de Camp complains about in his writer's handbook, where, after all their efforts to raise the spaceship, fix it, and take off from the planet they've been stranded on finally succeeds, the author has the ship totalled by a meteor "just to show how cynical he is". When I saw the Disney adaptation of TSTS in Fantasia 2000 I had not a glimmer of annoyance that they changed the ending.