# 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:** 6
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/101 "2016-09-07T15:56:36Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned anything from the Game of Thrones series. I only read the first part of one book, but just based on what I’ve heard it sounds like it’s full of torture/rape/misery porn. And so is the HBO series. You watch it at all? I haven’t read any of the books, but the series is full of what you mention. It’s also a pretty bleak world, in much the same way I’ll bet the actual Middle Ages were, though without the magic. But it does have an exciting story arc for many (though not exactly all) of the plot lines, like a rated-R version of LotR. All-in-all, great television at least. ---
**Author:** ![Waltzes\_with\_Cacti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/90ced4/32.png) [@Waltzes\_with\_Cacti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waltzes_with_Cacti)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/102 "2016-09-07T16:02:05Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned anything from the Game of Thrones series. I only read the first part of one book, but just based on what I’ve heard it sounds like it’s full of torture/rape/misery porn. But GoT has castles! Dragons! Nifty shining armor on hunky men and floor-sweeping kirtles on gorgeous women. Nifty shining armor on one gorgeous woman. Sorceresses dressed in scarlet cloaks with ruby chokers round their throats. A witty, cynical dwarf. Dicks 'n tits. Explosions of green fire. Who minds a little misery when you have all of that? Did I mention the dragons? ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/103 "2016-09-07T16:05:12Z")
My contribution to “most depressing” threads is usually “Boys and Girls Together” by William Goldman. You may have heard of him – he wrote The Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Marathon Man, and lots of others. Well, he’s a great writer with a gift for making you really like his characters. Then he does terrible things to them. Apparently when he started writing novels in the late 50’s, early 60’s, happy endings were not a thing. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/104 "2016-09-07T16:05:21Z")
> [@Waltzes\_with\_Cacti](#): > > But GoT has castles! Dragons! Nifty shining armor on hunky men and floor-sweeping kirtles on gorgeous women. Nifty shining armor on one gorgeous woman. Sorceresses dressed in scarlet cloaks with ruby chokers round their throats. A witty, cynical dwarf. Dicks 'n tits. Explosions of green fire. Who minds a little misery when you have all of that? > > Did I mention the dragons? The only thing even remotely original about GoT is that you don’t hit the end of a chapter when two people start to f\*ck or chop each other to pieces, or both. Recycled drivel with a shovel of hot spices. And yes, relentlessly, aggressively, endlessly depressing. ---
**Author:** ![Azeotrope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/0ea827/32.png) [@Azeotrope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Azeotrope)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/105 "2016-09-07T16:19:32Z")
_My Sister’s Keeper,_ the ending of which pissed me off so much I really did rip it in half and throw it across the room. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/106 "2016-09-07T16:27:23Z")
> [@cmyk](#): > > And so is the HBO series. You watch it at all? I watched the first Season and while it was good TV, it was way too disturbing for my tastes. At this point, based on what I’ve heard, it just sounds like exploitative plot device after plot device with no apparent motive other than to shock and dismay. I don’t consider that good writing, though obviously a lot of people disagree with me because it’s a very popular show. I don’t mind misery at all. I do mind misery without a point. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/107 "2016-09-07T16:37:12Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I watched the first Season and while it was good TV, it was way too disturbing for my tastes. At this point, based on what I’ve heard, it just sounds like exploitative plot device after plot device with no apparent motive other than to shock and dismay. I don’t consider that good writing, though obviously a lot of people disagree with me because it’s a very popular show. > > I don’t mind misery at all. I do mind misery without a point. Then stay way, way away from the whole mess! And speaking of Stephen King and _Flowers for Algernon,_ and ‘the whole mess’, he wrote a short story very similar to _Flowers for Algernon_ called **The End of the Whole Mess.** The story’s form is that of an account of a genius’s brother who figured out a way to eliminate any violent nature in humans. TPTB decide to seed the drug into the whole world, bringing on a short period of absolute peace. The unfortunate side-effect being, which they found out far too late, is that it eventually it erodes your mental capacity to being a driveling idiot; then death. The ending was so sad. Great read though. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/108 "2016-09-07T16:55:03Z")
> [@cmyk](#): > > The unfortunate side-effect being, which they found out far too late, is that it eventually it erodes your mental capacity to being a driveling idiot; then death. Hmm. Sounds like a fair trade-off. I haven’t actually read _Flowers for Algernon._ ---
**Author:** ![Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a183cd/32.png) [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barkis_is_Willin)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/109 "2016-09-07T17:06:09Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I’d nominate _Crime and Punishment_, which I loved but never finished because it made me want to shoot myself. I second this. First book that came to my mind, and frankly I’m not sure what’s second but I don’t think it’s close. C&P is not like a sad sob story or anything, it’s just so dark and dismal. Of course, Dostoyevsky was exiled in Siberia doing hard labor for several years, so what do you expect. ---
**Author:** ![Petrobey\_Mavromihalis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bcef8e/32.png) [@Petrobey\_Mavromihalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Petrobey_Mavromihalis)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/110 "2016-09-07T17:28:09Z")
_The Good Soldier_ by George Gissing is summed up by it’s famous 1st line: [QUOTE=George Gissing] This is the saddest story I have ever heard. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/111 "2016-09-07T17:34:54Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > I would like to add Lord of the Flies by William Golding. I saw the (original) movie and then read the book when I was 13 or so. Exactly the wrong age for this content, and I was depressed for weeks afterwards (if I didn’t have such a basically sunny disposition it would have scarred me for life). That was school required reading when I was 14. I utterly hated it, until I found the book it’s a sort of parody of, _Coral Island_. After reading that sickly dreck, in which a bunch of boys with largely the same names get shipwrecked, then basically rebuild the British empire on a tiny scale (stopping just short of tea plantations and forming cricket teams only because of the lack of natives to subjugate), while having jolly japes, it totally changed my view on _Lord of the Flies_. Honestly, I wanted horrible things to happen to those cardboard characters just as much as William Golding clearly did. ---
**Author:** ![Evin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/59ef9b/32.png) [@Evin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evin)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/112 "2016-09-07T17:41:27Z")
_Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family_ ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/113 "2016-09-07T18:11:02Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Yes indeed. If we’re going to get down to short stories, I have a list, and several of them are Bradbury. Soft Rains is one; the other of that scale is the one about the girl on Venus who dreams of the sun, and ends up locked in a closet during the half-hour the sun shines each four years. I never read that, but I did see the short film it was based on. Very sad. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/114 "2016-09-07T18:17:28Z")
> [@](#): > > That was school required reading when I was 14. I utterly hated it, until I found the book it’s a sort of parody of, Coral Island. After reading that sickly dreck, in which a bunch of boys with largely the same names get shipwrecked, then basically rebuild the British empire on a tiny scale (stopping just short of tea plantations and forming cricket teams only because of the lack of natives to subjugate), while having jolly japes, it totally changed my view on Lord of the Flies. Honestly, I wanted horrible things to happen to those cardboard characters just as much as William Golding clearly did. Interesting, because I’ve long thought of Heinlein’s _Tunnel in the Sky_ as being a response to _Lord of the Flies_ (even though the publication dates make that unlikely). In Heinlein’s story, a group of youths stranded far from civilization manage, through some muddling through, to build a basically functional (though not perfect) society, only to get branded as savages when they’re eventually rescued. ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/115 "2016-09-07T18:28:40Z")
_A Narrow Street_ by Elliot Paul: about Paris in the 1920s – widely felt to be an overall joyful place and time. Not in this novel, whose emphasis is heavily on how horribly screwed-up France was in multiple ways, owing to World War I and its consequences; plus much concerning ugly oppression at the time, of the “have-nots” there (essentially, the book’s central characters), by the “haves”. Add in, much about folk then living in Paris, displaced from their homes elsewhere in Europe, mostly further east – in the main, ill-treated and disliked by French officialdom and French individuals; and with abundant hideous back-stories about what had been done to them back home, especially during WWI. Mostly, a misery surfeit-and-overdose. > [@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. > [@moojja](#): > > That book actually has an upbeat ending, if you’re a communist. I’ve never been a communist; but I personally found _The Jungle_ a less miserable read, than I’d envisaged. Much horrible and heartbreaking stuff, re big business abominably ill-using the working stiffs; but also, in my view, a surprising amount of picaresque comedy and strange experiences, engaged in by the book’s protagonists – plus the hero and his friends’ discovery of Socialism as a positive way forward (which would likely have ultimately gone sour for them in real life; but the book does not take us that far, chronologically). > [@Chronos](#): > > Also worthy of mention is Tolkien’s _The Children of Hurin_. It’s probably the second-most-depressing book I’ve ever read, but the quality of the writing is so amazingly good that you can’t stop yourself from reading it. I’ve loved _LOTR_ and _The Hobbit_ almost lifelong; but I’ve heard from sundry sources about – as above cite – the extreme depressingness of "JRRT and editors’ " chronicles of Middle-Earth pre-the late Third Age. Reckon it most unlikely that I’ll ever embark on _Silmarillion_ or _Children of Hurin_; be their literary crafting never so exquisite. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/116 "2016-09-07T18:29:47Z")
I see that Ethan Frome and Sanctuary have been mentioned, so I’ll add Rabbit, Run. And for short stories, The Man Who Came Early, by Poul Anderson. ---
**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 7, 2016, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/117 "2016-09-07T18:48:21Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I haven’t actually read _Flowers for Algernon._ Don’t do it unless you’ve grown tired of living. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/118 "2016-09-07T18:49:37Z")
Plus one for **Jude The Obscure**. ---
**Author:** ![cwthree](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9de0a6/32.png) [@cwthree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cwthree)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/119 "2016-09-07T19:02:14Z")
> [@Filbert](#): > > That was school required reading when I was 14. I utterly hated it, until I found the book it’s a sort of parody of, _Coral Island_. After reading that sickly dreck, in which a bunch of boys with largely the same names get shipwrecked, then basically rebuild the British empire on a tiny scale (stopping just short of tea plantations and forming cricket teams only because of the lack of natives to subjugate), while having jolly japes, it totally changed my view on _Lord of the Flies_. Honestly, I wanted horrible things to happen to those cardboard characters just as much as William Golding clearly did. Now I have to find _Coral Island_, read it, and re-read _Lord of the Flies_ (which I, too, had to read at 13 or 14). Kundera’s _The Incredible Lightness of Being_ is one that I recall as being particularly unpleasant. Not only did the characters seem like thoroughly miserable people, the story itself was underwhelming and didn’t live up to anything I’d heard about it. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2016, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209/120 "2016-09-07T19:24:37Z")
> [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](#): > > I second this. First book that came to my mind, and frankly I’m not sure what’s second but I don’t think it’s close. C&P is not like a sad sob story or anything, it’s just so dark and dismal. Of course, Dostoyevsky was exiled in Siberia doing hard labor for several years, so what do you expect. I had read his _Notes from Underground_ and that was depressing as shit also. I loved _Lord of the Flies._ I guess I have really dark tastes. Which is fine but it can be a real pain in the ass because sometimes it just gets _too_ depressing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-depressing-novel-you-ever-read/765209.md?page=7)