# Books that have made you bawl **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 24, 2004, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829 "2004-02-24T04:11:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Lord\_Ashtar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ea924/32.png) [@Lord\_Ashtar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Ashtar)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/81 "2004-02-25T18:46:03Z")
When I was in 4th grade, I read _My Brother Sam is Dead_. To this day it’s the only book I’ve ever read that’s made me cry. ---
**Author:** ![jeevwoman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de053/32.png) [@jeevwoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jeevwoman)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/82 "2004-02-25T18:50:59Z")
_She’s Come Undone_, by Wally Lamb. A lot of what Pat Conroy writes has me in tears–most notably \*Beach Music \* and _The Lords of Discipline_. And most of the Harry Potters, too, just basically when the aunt and uncle treat him like shit. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/83 "2004-02-25T20:43:08Z")
J.T. Leroy’s [Sarah](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/158234146X/qid=1077741453/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/102-7949869-6523321?v=glance&s=books) and [The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1582342113/ref=pd_bxgy_text_1/102-7949869-6523321?v=glance&s=books&st=*). Leroy was a second generation truck-stop prostitute from the time he was 12 (his mother, who was 14 when she was born, hooked until she died) and both of these works are autobiographical fiction. The thought that **ANY** child would have to endure these things in his childhood just make me want to… well, cry. (I’d say that I wanted to beat the living shi-ite out of his mother, but many men did that many times [though not because she was such a horrible mother] and it certainly didn’t help the situation.) While not a book, Truman Capote’s autobiographical short-stories _A Thanksgiving Visitor_ and _A Christmas Memory_ (both about the time he spent as a boy living with his “simple” aunt, quite probably the only time in his life when he was happy) bring me to tears every time I read them. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/84 "2004-02-25T20:51:16Z")
As for novels, the last chapter of [War & Remembrance](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316954993/qid=1077742155/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/102-7949869-6523321) hit me hard, when Natalie Jastrow Henry, having physically recuperated somewhat six months after surviving Auschwitz, is reunited with her four year old son whom she’d assumed was dead. ---
**Author:** ![MrVisible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@MrVisible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrVisible)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/85 "2004-02-25T21:20:13Z")
> [@Draelin](#): > > And this sounds strange, I’m sure, but I cried like a baby for the last few chapters of _Ender’s Game_. Not too terribly strange. I’ve cried at a few books, but nothing left me so devastated as the early Orson Scott Card novel _Songmaster_. Total catharsis. Astonishing. > [@amarinth](#): > > But, and I’m ashamed to admit it, the last book that had me crying was “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.” I broke up completely at the stone table. Oh, yeah. That one too. And if we’re including short stories, there’s one by Theodore Sturgeon called _Slow Sculpture_ that I’ve been trying to track down for ages. Beautiful, brilliant, and I cried for hours. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/86 "2004-02-25T21:29:08Z")
I’m not one for crying over a book, but Steinbeck can put a manly lump in your throat. Not only **Of Mice and Men** , which has been mentioned by several posters, but also **The Grapes of Wrath**. In particular, I’m thinking of the chapter where the hard-boiled waitress at the truck stop soft-heartedly sells the Joads a loaf of bread and some candy below cost (practically giving it away), and the big-hearted trucker at the counter, seeing this, quietly leaves the waitress a huge tip. Something about the “We’re all in this together” sentimentality of that chapter gets to me. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/87 "2004-02-25T21:33:29Z")
> [@Selkie](#): > > Another weepy for me (at least when I was a kid, and I refuse to re-read it as an adult lest it provoke the same reaction) So, I’m not the only one who does that, huh? I simply can’t ever bear to reread _Bridge to Terabithia_ because I know what a wreck I’d be afterwards. Julie ---
**Author:** ![Alto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Alto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alto)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/88 "2004-02-26T00:14:28Z")
The first book that ever made me cry was _Primrose Day_ by Carolyn Haywood. It was about a little girl who was evacuated to the U.S. from England during WWII. She always had primroses on her birthday and believed they didn’t have them in the U.S. And I’m surprised _Little Women_ hasn’t come up yet (unless I missed it?) When I was 10 every single girl I knew was reading it and weeping. ---
**Author:** ![Idlewild](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8491ac/32.png) [@Idlewild](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idlewild)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/89 "2004-02-26T00:51:04Z")
The bit in _Fionavar Tapestry_ where you find out about what happened to the Elves. I have a soft spot for Elves, and that just kills me. I don’t even know if I could re-read it, even though I loved the trilogy to pieces. About Diarmud too, goodness, that makes me weepy. Heck the whole thing is overly emotional for me! I _just_ re-read _Little Women_. I forgot how potent the sad part is. Good grief. I think I cried when I first read _Lolita_… the part where Humbert says she had nowhere else to go. Godawful. Brilliant writing. Hurts to think about it. Various parts of George. R.R. Martin’s _Song of Ice and Fire_ until I got the clue not to get too attached to anyone. Yargh. _Gaudy Night_ when Lord Peter tells Harriet that all he had to offer her was Oxford, and it was already hers. ---
**Author:** ![Lsura](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7993a0/32.png) [@Lsura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lsura)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/90 "2004-02-26T00:59:33Z")
> [@Alto](#): > > The first book that ever made me cry was _Primrose Day_ by Carolyn Haywood. It was about a little girl who was evacuated to the U.S. from England during WWII. She always had primroses on her birthday and believed they didn’t have them in the U.S. I remember reading this book! I don’t remember crying about it, but it definitely sticks out in my mind, especially when they go on a picnic (?) and there is a patch of primroses there. ---
**Author:** ![Akaadji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@Akaadji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akaadji)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/91 "2004-02-26T01:17:37Z")
I cry at a lot of things…^^() A lot of the aforementioned books (Where the Red Fern Grows, Flowers for Algernon, Bridge to Terabithia, the last two HP books, Watership Down etc.) have done it for me, but I would like to add Animist, by Eve Forward, and the Seventh Gate, the last of the Death Gate books. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/92 "2004-02-26T01:45:37Z")
> [@hanza](#): > > The Duncton Wood books- William Horwood. > > ( Someone at amazon uk said that these books weren’t available in the US- is it true?). I don’t know if the books are available now, but I picked up the first (in paperback) some twenty-five years ago or so. I have no strong memories of it. Sorry. The book that gets me every time is \*\*Figures of Earth \*\* by James Branch Cabell. The ending is very difficult for me to read. Also Chapter XXXIII of the next book in the series, **The Silver Stallion**. I read these both at an impressionable age, and still get choked up just thinking about “The Economics of Coth.” I keep what few Cabell books I have been able to collect on the “good shelf,” near the Peake, Tolkein, and Lovecraft. ---
**Author:** ![Lissla\_Lissar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lissla\_Lissar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissla_Lissar)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/93 "2004-02-26T03:03:36Z")
Of course I bawl at the end of LOTR. Especially the very last line. It’s almost required, isn’t it, if you’re a LOTR fan? I’ve read several books aloud to my husband, and one of the first was _Anne Of Green Gables_ (he’s undereducated and hadn’t read it) and when Matthew died we both lost it. I couldn’t finish the chapter without a ten-minute break and he was sobbing. The same thing happened at the end of _Beauty_, by Sheri S. Tepper- when the main character lies down beside her true love, at the end of her battle to preserve all the good in the world, with the hope that someday they’ll reawaken and be able to be together… I’m crying, now. Damn. _Bridge To Teribithia_, _Deerkskin_ by Robin McKinley, _Lilith_ by George MacDonald\*. _Watership Down_. Lots of others I can’t remember. I’m such a watering can. ---
**Author:** ![Treviathan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/838e76/32.png) [@Treviathan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treviathan)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/94 "2004-02-26T03:06:52Z")
**The Wars** by Timothy Findlay. What a sad, bleak story about a misunderstood soul fighting in WWI. The final lines, describing a photo of Robert Ross and his sister taken before the war, still make me tear up: _Robert and Rowena with Meg_: Rowena seated astride the pony - Robert holding her in place. On the back is written: ‘Look! You can see our breath!’ And you can. I have to teach a class on this in two weeks, and I’m not touching the last five pages because I don’t want to start crying in front of my students. ---
**Author:** ![Super\_Gnat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Super\_Gnat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Super_Gnat)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/95 "2004-02-26T04:02:36Z")
> [@Journeyman](#): > > I’ll second _Night_. It’s very powerfully written, but it’s the unflinching nature of the story that left me in ashes. > This didn’t make me cry, but I do think it’s sad: a Bradbury story, I think it’s called _And there will come silent rains_. Or maybe that line is just mentioned in the story somewhere. > > The one about the automated house diligently caring for a family that was vaporized by a nuclear weapon years ago. Aw crap, I can remember reading that story at nine or ten and just totally breaking down. Depressed me for days. It’s also the second-to-last story in the Martian Chronicles, though I think it might be slightly different there. _Shizuko’s Daughter_ by Kyoko Mori, about the daughter of a woman who commits suicide in Japan in the 60s. It’s an absolutely gorgeous book. _Bridge to Terabithia_, of course. I read it once when I was a child and cried at the end. I read it a second time last year and cried all the way through because I knew what was coming. Even so, I wouldn’t change a word of it. ---
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/96 "2004-02-26T04:42:03Z")
One that got to me was Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” – the idea that Mike is really still there, just so shell-shocked he’s (metaphorically) hiding in a corner, rocking back and forth and back and forth… \ ---
**Author:** ![kung\_fu\_lola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f4b2a3/32.png) [@kung\_fu\_lola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kung_fu_lola)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/97 "2004-02-26T07:23:02Z")
> [@Idlewild](#): > > The bit in _Fionavar Tapestry_ where you find out about what happened to the Elves. I have a soft spot for Elves, and that just kills me. I don’t even know if I could re-read it, even though I loved the trilogy to pieces. I was just cold with horror at that part, but when Leyse realized that after Lancelot, she had nothing more to live for, and she became “the first in her people for past a thousand years to reach the world the Weaver had shaped for the Children of Light alone,” I _lost it_. ---
**Author:** ![Coulbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Coulbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coulbean)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/98 "2004-02-26T08:34:20Z")
**Of Mice and Men** - I had never seen the movies and I had NO idea what I was in for. Finished it while home alone. I was sobbing when my mom and step-dad got home… I told them why I was bawling and my step-dad just nodded. **Lord of the Flies** - Again, I had no idea what I was in for… poor Piggy **Mick Hart was Here** - I read it in grade school. Story told by a girl whose brother recently died in a bike accident. **Dragons of Spring Dawning** When Flint dies… **Where the Red Fern Grows** of course… I can’t think of any more right now. ---
**Author:** ![RexDart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b77776/32.png) [@RexDart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RexDart)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/99 "2004-02-26T08:35:14Z")
I’ll admit to crying only once at a book. That’s the end to Walter Miller’s _A Canticle for Leibowitz_. I was, upon both readings, so overcome by the scope of despair, the magnitude of hopelessness, the futility of human endeavor, that I lost myself. I come close when I read _Brave New World_ as well, the fate of the Savage bringing me there. Also, one of the short stories compiled into Bradbury’s _The Martian Chronicles_, “There will come soft rains”. There is something epic, terrifying and sad about those stories that drives my mind into places it would rather not go. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2004, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829/100 "2004-02-26T20:51:15Z")
Leslie Feinberg’s _Stone Butch Blues_. There’s just an incredible shrieking aloneness to this book, I don’t know how to explain it but it left me crying for a day or so, off and on, after I’d read it. Corny, perhaps, but effective: Asimov’s short story “The Ugly Little Boy” Stephen King’s _Carrie_ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-that-have-made-you-bawl/230829.md?page=6)