# The most depressing novel you ever read **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 6, 2016, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209 "2016-09-06T18:27:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![AppallingGael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9bd4f/32.png) [@AppallingGael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AppallingGael)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2016, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/201 "2016-09-17T04:43:13Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > I did. After I graduated college (where one of my majors was English) I decided to read some “classics” that I hadn’t read in school. Silas Marner has the virtue of being a lot shorter than some of them. Not one of the better ones, though. I have also. I was surprised to see Ann Coulter in it. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2016, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/202 "2016-09-17T20:01:36Z")
In my top five would have to be _[The Gods of Pegana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_of_Peg%C4%81na)_ by Lord Dunsany. Inspired by Hindu mythology, it depicts a cosmos that is cruelly indifferent to humanity. For starters, all creation is the dream of an Ubergod, and will vanish like a soap bubble when he someday wakes up. The lesser gods don’t give a damn about humanity, except to punish people for hubris or to torture them for fun. Love, justice, purpose? Fuggedaboutit. ---
**Author:** ![gallows\_fodder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8c91f0/32.png) [@gallows\_fodder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gallows_fodder)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2016, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/203 "2016-09-17T21:02:47Z")
> [@TheInimitableMaven](#): > > I wholeheartedly agree that _The Pearl_ was depressing, but I actually liked it…it was among the few things that I was forced to read in school that I did enjoy and found interesting. > > My nominations would have to be _Great Expectations_ and _Les Miserables_. It’s one thing when the stories themselves are depressing, but when the actual reading is trudging and amplifies that depression, that’s another. Thank gawd I never had to read _Moby Dick_, _Of Mice And Men_, and _Jude The Obscure_… Moby Dick isn’t depressing, though, and is in fact, really funny and entertaining! I would have hated it if I had had to read it in school, too (because I’m sure I would have tried to read it all the morning of the big test), but I read it for the first time last Christmas and absolutely loved it. Don’t keep away from it thinking it’s going to be a boring slog because it really isn’t! ---
**Author:** ![Allezgatta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/65b543/32.png) [@Allezgatta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Allezgatta)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2016, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/204 "2016-09-18T03:22:37Z")
I came to say Painted Bird by Kozinsky. It was so disturbing that I recall asking myself “should I be reading this?” ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2016, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/205 "2016-09-18T06:05:39Z")
> [@Allezgatta](#): > > I came to say Painted Bird by Kozinsky. It was so disturbing that I recall asking myself “should I be reading this?” JZ’s _Blind Date_ wasn’t exactly an all-nice-n-gooey-fest, either. Kinda tough, though, distinguishing memoir from novels with his stuff, sometimes, so I don’t know if one can technically call it a novel. > [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I had read his _Notes from Underground_ and that was depressing as shit also. Holy GOALIE _Notes_ really takes the cake. It takes several cakes. Actually, it takes so many cakes, that Cuddles from _Polyester_ would have a really, really tough time getting through all of them. Too illiterate to go through whole thread, but I’d be surprised if Knut Hamsen’s _Hunger_ hasn’t been mentioned. I made the mistake of reading it when I was sick - felt like Munch’s stupid screamer in the process - and regretted, very much, wading through equally feverish prose that swept me up in this swirling impressionistic shitstorm as buddy (oh great - first person narrator, too, just to _really_ immerse us in it), tried to navigate through a maelstrom of unsteady encounters with various people during his impoverished search for food. Felt almost claustrophobic being continuously subjected to his increasingly less lucid musings, which grew more intense and frenzied as his physical state correspondingly declined. Shit-eating-grin-tastic. DM Thomas’s novel _The White Hotel_, at points, was depressingly grim, like the depredations of World War Two, and even all that horndog poetry \< (?) at the beginning wasn’t exactly _un_-depressing, let’s just say. Even her parrying with “Freud” was a bit of a bring-down. The ending, like - whoa - whole different kettle of over-steamed eggplant, there - powerful, moving, almost dare I say wrenching. Certainly didn’t see it coming, considering what preceded it. Pretty-well a happy ending, basically, without being incongruous nor facile. John Howard Griffin’s _Black Like Me_ was depressing, but got me fired up, too, and Arthur Koestler’s _Darkness At Noon_ was upbeat like one of Mr. Mike’s least loved bedtime tales was. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2016, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/206 "2016-09-18T22:47:43Z")
> [@Allezgatta](#): > > I came to say Painted Bird by Kozinsky. It was so disturbing that I recall asking myself “should I be reading this?” I bought that book at a thrift store several years ago, and before I had a chance to read it, one of my cats threw up on it. :o ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2016, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/207 "2016-09-21T17:15:50Z")
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane is not exactly jolly reading. Nor is ‘House of Mirth’ by Edith Wharton. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2016, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/208 "2016-09-21T17:26:27Z")
Has anyone mentioned Elie Wiesel’s _Night_ yet? > [@](#): > > Behind me, I heard the same man asking: Where is God now? > > And I heard a voice within me answer him: … Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows. ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2016, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/209 "2016-09-21T17:39:24Z")
Allow me to present [Shantaram](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33600.Shantaram), by Gregory David Roberts. Not only does the main character spend most of the novel providing basic first aid in one of the worst slums in Bombay/Mumbai (which thrills the residents who previously had exactly jack and shit to treat their wounds and illnesses) it also kills off the only happy character in the most gruesome way possible. Happy Guy gets married and becomes a cab driver. Late one night he gets hit by a truck carrying steel girders which fly into his car and rip off his entire lower jaw. But he’s not dead, oh no. He survives several days in the hospital and \*then \*he dies. ---
**Author:** ![Theodore\_Striker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/74df32/32.png) [@Theodore\_Striker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theodore_Striker)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2016, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/210 "2016-11-04T16:57:10Z")
There are some really great suggestions here, though this may be a list I would be happier avoiding reading. I will add to the list though… _Winter’s Bone_ by Woodrell. Even though it can be taken that things work out for the protagonist, the cycle of the lifestyle that she lives in is pretty bleak looking forward, especially if that cycle is relatable personally. ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8dc957/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2016, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/211 "2016-11-04T17:29:18Z")
> [@Shoeless](#): > > “The Jungle.” I’m not even sure how it ends, because I never finished it the three times I started it. It was too damn depressing to keep reading. Jurgis finds out Socialism cures everything. Upton at his most Upbeat. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2016, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/212 "2016-11-04T19:05:21Z")
I read all the way to the end sure that somebody else would have mentioned _A Fine Balance_. Really, nobody? Because that book, my god, music to hang oneself to. There’s a difference between “books that are sad, or have sad parts” and “books that are just flat out depressing”. I find myself putting down books that are overwhelmingly bleak, or that have a certain kind of cruelty, these days. (Not just books that are sad, books should be sad sometimes.) I put down _Let the Right One In_ because it was just so relentlessly bleak, and another one that I can’t remember the name of but it’s recent, and really nasty, and about whalers? because it had that specific sort of cruelty. ---
**Author:** ![Totenfeier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4bbf92/32.png) [@Totenfeier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Totenfeier)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2016, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/213 "2016-11-04T20:57:21Z")
_A Canticle for Leibowitz_, Walter M. Miller, Jr. Goddam, I love this book. It is the biggest middle finger to the entire human race that I can think of, but it is also beautiful, haunting, lyrical, maddening, saddening, and hysterically funny all at the same time. ---
**Author:** ![Theodore\_Striker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/74df32/32.png) [@Theodore\_Striker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theodore_Striker)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2016, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/214 "2016-11-04T21:10:22Z")
> [@Totenfeier](#): > > _A Canticle for Leibowitz_, Walter M. Miller, Jr. > > Goddam, I love this book. It is the biggest middle finger to the entire human race that I can think of, but it is also beautiful, haunting, lyrical, maddening, saddening, and hysterically funny all at the same time. Another great example, in praise and damnation of human nature. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Devil\_s\_Grandmother](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/74df32/32.png) [@The\_Devil\_s\_Grandmother](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Devil_s_Grandmother)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2016, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/215 "2016-11-04T21:30:19Z")
> [@Eddie The Horrible](#): > > John Howard Griffin’s _Black Like Me_ was depressing, but got me fired up, too, and Arthur Koestler’s _Darkness At Noon_ was upbeat like one of Mr. Mike’s least loved bedtime tales was. I found _Black Like Me_ incredibly depressing when I read it in the 1980s. More recently Bryan Stevenson’s _Just Mercy_ is even more depressing because a lot of it is the same problems. Upvotes for Kazuo Ishiguro’s _Never Let Me Go_ and _The Remains of the Day_ both mentioned upthread. ---
**Author:** ![coffeecat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/coffeecat/32/3405_2.png) [@coffeecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coffeecat)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2016, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/216 "2016-11-04T23:15:08Z")
Another vote for _The Handmaid’s Tale._ It hit me harder than even _1984_, for some reason. Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2016, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/217 "2016-11-04T23:43:48Z")
Charles Frazier’s “Thirteen Moons” comes to mind, off the top of my head. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2016, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/218 "2016-11-04T23:51:52Z")
Also William Trevor’s “Felicia’s Journey”. I took it along to read on a trip, it was so depressing, I threw it away somewhere in Cental Asia, it nearly spoiled the trip. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2016, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/219 "2016-11-04T23:53:49Z")
> [@coffeecat](#): > > Another vote for _The Handmaid’s Tale._ It hit me harder than even _1984_, for some reason. Possibly because theocracy seems more plausible in the USA than socialism? ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2016, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/220 "2016-11-05T00:08:37Z")
> [@Allezgatta](#): > > I came to say Painted Bird by Kozinsky. It was so disturbing that I recall asking myself “should I be reading this?” I was waiting for something worse than Jude the Obscure. Thank you. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209.md?page=12)