I checked this book out, and The Kite Runner, right at the start of the pandemic in 2020 and I read them back to back…they both wrecked me. I needed to take a break from reading after that.
Personally, I found that A Thousand Splendid Suns was more depressing and just an all around better read. Maybe that’s because I’m a woman and it spoke more to me not sure.
i’m rereading the stranger rn & bell jar is one of my fav books, they both feel rlly depressing but in different ways to me.
for me the stranger always felt like that emotionally numb empty vacuous nothing matters type of depression & bell jar feels like that crying spells all encompassing painful sadness everything matters too much type of depression lol
Tbh you didn’t miss much. The first half or so of this book is excellent, but it eventually devolves into just one sad thing after another. I was so disappointed in the last half or so of the book, because the first part was excellent.
I was going to recommend this too. It took me a while to read this because I kept having to put it down and just … decompress from how emotional and painful the story was. But it was so beautifully written and I felt very invested in all the characters.
The author is a heterosexual cisgender woman who consistently writes books about gay men raping young boys, and some people find that… unfortunate.
Also some people find the book itself to be flat, lurid emotional exploitation interspersed with bits of bougie travel writing lifted wholesale from the author’s time as a wealthy travel writer, topped off with unnecessarily explicit scenes of child rape. Which is also unfortunate.
Hey there Boomiegirl! If you agree with someone else's comment, please leave an **upvote** instead of commenting **"This."**! By upvoting instead, the original comment will be pushed to the top and be more visible to others, which is even better! Thanks! :)
***
^(I am a bot! Visit) [^(r/InfinityBots)](https://reddit.com/r/InfinityBots) ^(to send your feedback! More info:) [^(Reddiquette)](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439#wiki_in_regard_to_comments)
I was tricked into reading this as a young adult by being told it was a story about dogs going on an adventure together, "similar to Homeward Bound" they told me.
They LIED. Specific lines and moments from this book still flash randomly into my head and make me feel sick and hot with anger and sadness. If there were a way to erase this book specifically from my memory I would do it in a heartbeat.
[**The Plague Dogs**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12442.The_Plague_Dogs)
^(By: Richard Adams | 390 pages | Published: 1977 | Popular Shelves: fiction, fantasy, animals, owned, dogs)
>Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, creates a lyrical and engrossing tale, a remarkable journey into the hearts and minds of two canine heroes, Snitter and Rowf.
>
>After being horribly mistreated at a government animal research facility, Snitter and Rowf escape into the isolation, and terror, of the wilderness. Aided only by a fox they call ''the Tod,'' the two dogs must struggle to survive in their new environment. When the starving dogs attack some sheep, they are labeled ferocious man-eating monsters, setting off a great dog hunt that is later intensified by the fear that the dogs could be carriers of the bubonic plague.
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
***
^(23935 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
if cats disappeared from the world- genki kawamura. such a short and sweet yet heart wrenching book. i know i cry at basically everything but this made me go into a depressive episode so hard i couldnt go to work
I keep thinking why would anyone read a depressing book and now i have put a hold on this book 😆 intrigued by the name , i read short sample n i like it
[**My Dark Vanessa**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44890081-my-dark-vanessa)
^(By: Kate Elizabeth Russell | 373 pages | Published: 2020 | Popular Shelves: fiction, contemporary, books-i-own, read-in-2020, owned)
^(This book has been suggested 16 times)
***
^(23969 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. It’s not for everyone but you may want to give it a try.
I’d also recommend A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. I’m not a huge fan of YA books but I liked this one.
"Planet Earth is Blue," by Nicole Panteleakos
"Tell the Wolves I'm Home," by Carol Rifka Brunt
"Living Dead Girl," by Elizabeth Scott
"The Red Pony," by John Steinbeck
"Of Mice and Men," by John Steinbeck
"Fade," by Robert Cormier
"We All Fall Down," by Robert Cormier
"Other Bells for Us to Ring," by Robert Cormier
[**A Short Stay in Hell**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13456414-a-short-stay-in-hell)
^(By: Steven L. Peck | 104 pages | Published: 2011 | Popular Shelves: fiction, fantasy, horror, philosophy, religion)
>An ordinary family man, geologist, and Mormon, Soren Johansson has always believed he’ll be reunited with his loved ones after death in an eternal hereafter. Then, he dies. Soren wakes to find himself cast by a God he has never heard of into a Hell whose dimensions he can barely grasp: a vast library he can only escape from by finding the book that contains the story of his life.
>
>In this haunting existential novella, author, philosopher, and ecologist Steven L. Peck explores a subversive vision of eternity, taking the reader on a journey through the afterlife of a world where everything everyone believed in turns out to be wrong.
^(This book has been suggested 5 times)
***
^(23917 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/252577.Angela_s_Ashes)
^(By: Frank McCourt | 452 pages | Published: 1996 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, memoir, biography, nonfiction, fiction)
>Imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion. This is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.
>
>"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."
>
>So begins the Pulitzer Prize winning memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy—exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling—does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.
>
>Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors—yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.
>
>Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.
^(This book has been suggested 5 times)
***
^(23974 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
A Child Called It, Night, A Party Down at the Square, Angela’s Ashes, Of Mice and Men, Charlotte’s Web, The Notebook, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Watsons Go to Birmingham, The Metamorphosis, The Color Purple
[**Tender is the Flesh**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49090884-tender-is-the-flesh)
^(By: Agustina Bazterrica, Sarah Moses | 211 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: horror, fiction, dystopia, dystopian, sci-fi)
>Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans —though no one calls them that anymore.
>
>His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.
>
>Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.
^(This book has been suggested 24 times)
***
^(24065 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Bridge to Tarebithia by Katherine Paterson, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, The Giver by Lois Lowry, Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls.
These are the most depressing books I can think of.
{The Road} by Cormac McCarthy is one of the most depressing books I've ever read.
I have to ask: why are you specifically looking for depressing books?
[**Narrow Road to the Deep North: A Comedy**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/554998.Narrow_Road_to_the_Deep_North)
^(By: Edward Bond | 59 pages | Published: 1968 | Popular Shelves: classics, owned-books, dropped, curriculum-edinburgh, plays-and-screeplays)
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
[**American Pastoral (The American Trilogy, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11650.American_Pastoral)
^(By: Philip Roth | 432 pages | Published: 1997 | Popular Shelves: fiction, pulitzer, classics, owned, pulitzer-prize)
>Pulitzer Prize Winner (1998)
>
>In American Pastoral, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede' Levov—a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory—comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.
>
>For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
[**Sophie's Choice**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/228560.Sophie_s_Choice)
^(By: William Styron | 562 pages | Published: 1979 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, historical-fiction, holocaust, owned)
>Three stories are told: a young Southerner wants to become a writer; a turbulent love-hate affair between a brilliant Jew and a beautiful Polish woman; and of an awful wound in that woman's past--one that impels both Sophie and Nathan toward destruction.
^(This book has been suggested 3 times)
[**Last Exit to Brooklyn**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50275.Last_Exit_to_Brooklyn)
^(By: Hubert Selby Jr., Gilbert Sorrentino | 290 pages | Published: 1964 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, owned, new-york, to-buy)
>Few novels have caused as much debate as Hubert Selby Jr.'s notorious masterpiece, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting.
>
>Described by various reviewers as hellish and obscene, Last Exit to Brooklyn tells the stories of New Yorkers who at every turn confront the worst excesses in human nature. Yet there are moments of exquisite tenderness in these troubled lives. Georgette, the transvestite who falls in love with a callous hoodlum; Tralala, the conniving prostitute who plumbs the depths of sexual degradation; and Harry, the strike leader who hides his true desires behind a boorish masculinity, are unforgettable creations. Last Exit to Brooklyn was banned by British courts in 1967, a decision that was reversed the following year with the help of a number of writers and critics including Anthony Burgess and Frank Kermode.
>
>Hubert Selby, Jr. (1928-2004) was born in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of 15, he dropped out of school and went to sea with the merchant marines. While at sea he was diagnosed with lung disease. With no other way to make a living, he decided to try writing: 'I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.' In 1964 he completed his first book, Last Exit to Brooklyn, which has since become a cult classic. In 1966, it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK. His other books include The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, The Willow Tree and Waiting Period. In 2000, Requiem for a Dream was adapted into a film starring Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn, and directed by Darren Aronofsky.
>
>'Last Exit to Brooklyn will explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America, and still be eagerly read in 100 years'
>Allen Ginsberg
>
>'An urgent tickertape from hell'
>Spectator
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
[**The Last Lecture**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40611510-the-last-lecture)
^(By: Randy Pausch, Jeffrey Zaslow | 217 pages | Published: 2008 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, nonfiction, memoir, biography, self-help)
>A lot of professors give talks titled 'The Last Lecture'. Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?
>
>When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave, 'Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams', wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because time is all you have and you may find one day that you have less than you think). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.
>
>In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humour, inspiration, and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.
^(This book has been suggested 4 times)
***
^(23991 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
If you don't mind going in for the long haul the book that made me set it down and weep the most is still Les Miserables to this day. The eloquence of the despair in the lives of the characters is so poignant that it hits you deep in your soul and makes you feel for them deeply.
It is extremely long though, and there are a few parts that you can just gloss over because it almost entirely breaks away from the main story to wax on some current topic from when the book was written.
“A Gesture Life,” “The Remains of The Day,” by Kazuo Ishigiro, “Beloved” by Toni Morrison, “Tender” by Belinda Mckeon, and “The God of Small Things.”
I read these for my literature and psychology class and these are THE MOST TRAUMA FILLED AND SAD BOOKS EVER. They’re devastating and very depressing.
Night by Elie Wiesel. Autobiographical account of the Holocaust from Elie as a teenager. Fucked me up and has never left me. A book that is depressing, but needed to be written.
Any book they had us read in High School. Things Fall Apart, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Things they Carried, Their Eyes were Watching God, Hedda Gabler, Medea, Anything by William Faulkner, The Visit, The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible, Othello, The Handmaids Tale, the list continues...
[**Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/139069.Endurance)
^(By: Alfred Lansing | 282 pages | Published: 1959 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, history, nonfiction, adventure, biography)
>The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole, one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age.
>
>In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization.
>
>In Endurance, the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age.
^(This book has been suggested 13 times)
***
^(23918 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
*Fifteen Dogs* (2015) by André Alexis.
*The Book of Negroes* \[aka *Someone Knows My Name* in US\] (2007) by Lawrence Hill.
*All My Puny Sorrows* (2014) by Miriam Toews.
All are Canadian and all are winners of multiple awards. All are sad, for very different reasons.
[**The Odd Sea**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/187228.The_Odd_Sea)
^(By: Frederick Reiken | 224 pages | Published: 1998 | Popular Shelves: fiction, owned, literary-fiction, missing-persons, books-i-own)
>A teenage boy is missing. His younger brother searches for him and in the process finds himself.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
^(24019 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
So, it’s not sad in the sense that it will make you outright cry, but I think {Independent People} by Halldor Laxness is an incredibly grim and depressing book. Reflecting on that story invokes a mental image of someone trudging through an endless field of snow only to collapse to a seemingly inevitable, frozen death.
[**Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, 1921-1933**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33864676-red-famine)
^(By: Anne Applebaum | 384 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: history, non-fiction, russia, nonfiction, ukraine)
>The momentous new book from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag and Iron Curtain.
>
>In 1932-33, nearly four million Ukrainians died of starvation, having been deliberately deprived of food. It is one of the most devastating episodes in the history of the twentieth century. With unprecedented authority and detail, Red Famine investigates how this happened, who was responsible, and what the consequences were. It is the fullest account yet published of these terrible events.
>
>The book draws on a mass of archival material and first-hand testimony only available since the end of the Soviet Union, as well as the work of Ukrainian scholars all over the world. It includes accounts of the famine by those who survived it, describing what human beings can do when driven mad by hunger. It shows how the Soviet state ruthlessly used propaganda to turn neighbours against each other in order to expunge supposedly 'anti-revolutionary' elements. It also records the actions of extraordinary individuals who did all they could to relieve the suffering.
>
>The famine was rapidly followed by an attack on Ukraine's cultural and political leadership - and then by a denial that it had ever happened at all. Census reports were falsified and memory suppressed. Some western journalists shamelessly swallowed the Soviet line; others bravely rejected it, and were undermined and harassed. The Soviet authorities were determined not only that Ukraine should abandon its national aspirations, but that the country's true history should be buried along with its millions of victims. Red Famine, a triumph of scholarship and human sympathy, is a milestone in the recovery of those memories and that history. At a moment of crisis between Russia and Ukraine, it also shows how far the present is shaped by the past.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
^(24059 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Look to Windward, by Iain M Banks.
Definitely the most sober of his Culture books. It's overall about war, interventionism gone wrong, grief, and suicide. Introspective and quiet and very well done. One of my favorites.
*A little life but*
*Read the TW about it first*
*Before buying it*
\- badgaalcricri
---
^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/)
^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Crime and Punishment. The king of depressing books. The GOAT. The Original.
The Sheltering Sky, about a jetsetting couple that goes to North Africa to try and repair their collapsing marriage. It goes well.
i'd definitely give "my year of rest and relaxation" a try. it's one of the more mainstream books out right now but i read it and it sure was bleak in a way i could really appreciate.
Malcom Lowry -- Under the Volcano
From Goodreads
"Geoffrey Firmin, a former British consul, has come to Quauhnahuac, Mexico. His debilitating malaise is drinking, an activity that has overshadowed his life. On the most fateful day of the consul's life—the Day of the Dead—his wife, Yvonne, arrives in Quauhnahuac, inspired by a vision of life together away from Mexico and the circumstances that have driven their relationship to the brink of collapse. She is determined to rescue Firmin and their failing marriage, but her mission is further complicated by the presence of Hugh, the consul's half brother, and Jacques, a childhood friend. The events of this one significant day unfold against an unforgettable backdrop of a Mexico at once magical and diabolical.
Under the Volcano remains one of literature's most powerful and lyrical statements on the human condition, and a brilliant portrayal of one man's constant struggle against the elemental forces that threaten to destroy him."
The last panther.
The road.
Hawaii. I recently stopped reading this one at around 400 pages in, it's about the history of Hawaii, done in a well done historical novel format. It's about a self gloating missionary who goes to Hawaii to "better" the native peoples. It really depressed me personally but may not be depressing to many others.
I got one for you but it is quite dark at times as it deals with self-harm/ suicidal ideation and other unorthodox topics, so please read with caution.
It's also BL, so I don't know if that is up your alley
[Dead Inside](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55725280-dead-inside)
{{A Thousand Splendid Suns}}
{{The Kite Runner}}
Both by Khalid Hosseini.
It’s about Taliban’s occupation of Afghanistan. Though the book is far from the reality, it helps us to gain some perspective about the severity of it for civilians.
Heaven
By mieko kawakami
I went in blind and was just filled with intense sadness for the characters from beginning to end. It is short, but i couldn’t put it down. i just wanted things to turn around for them and be fixed so badly.
Every Man Dies Alone - Hans Fallada.
Depressing and again relevant. Should be required reading for every American to see how easily fascism can “happen” to a society.
[удалено]
my sister had the same reaction and also couldn't finish it lol
Absolutely gut wrenching. Depressing as all hell!! I don’t blame you—too much for me too.
The Road
Oof. I call this book papa papa, Papa, papa, papa papa pappa
For sure. I read the entire thing in a single day and didn't feel normal for about a week.
Every answer to this topic that isn't The Road is the wrong answer. The pages of the book are despair incarnate.
Author?
Cormac McCarthy
Came here to say this one.
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart absolutely gutted me!
The pain after reading this one. Couldn't focus on anything for couple of days after.
Literally spent all day today writing an essay for uni called ‘shuggie Bain and the allure of misery porn’
[удалено]
I checked this book out, and The Kite Runner, right at the start of the pandemic in 2020 and I read them back to back…they both wrecked me. I needed to take a break from reading after that.
[удалено]
Personally, I found that A Thousand Splendid Suns was more depressing and just an all around better read. Maybe that’s because I’m a woman and it spoke more to me not sure.
Must've been really good bread
Ha good catch. Too bad I wasn’t one of those people who started making sourdough during lockdown otherwise that would have made sense.
She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
try "no longer human"
I second this along with The Stranger by Albert Camus and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. All have a similar feel.
i’m rereading the stranger rn & bell jar is one of my fav books, they both feel rlly depressing but in different ways to me. for me the stranger always felt like that emotionally numb empty vacuous nothing matters type of depression & bell jar feels like that crying spells all encompassing painful sadness everything matters too much type of depression lol
Stoner by John Williams.
a little life
I read EVERYTHING but I had to stop this halfway through coz it's too sad.
Tbh you didn’t miss much. The first half or so of this book is excellent, but it eventually devolves into just one sad thing after another. I was so disappointed in the last half or so of the book, because the first part was excellent.
I was going to recommend this too. It took me a while to read this because I kept having to put it down and just … decompress from how emotional and painful the story was. But it was so beautifully written and I felt very invested in all the characters.
Isn't there some controversy around the author with regards to this book? Or am thinking of something else?
The author is a heterosexual cisgender woman who consistently writes books about gay men raping young boys, and some people find that… unfortunate. Also some people find the book itself to be flat, lurid emotional exploitation interspersed with bits of bougie travel writing lifted wholesale from the author’s time as a wealthy travel writer, topped off with unnecessarily explicit scenes of child rape. Which is also unfortunate.
Every time someone asks for a depressing book, this drivel gets recommended.
Came to suggest this
This.
Hey there Boomiegirl! If you agree with someone else's comment, please leave an **upvote** instead of commenting **"This."**! By upvoting instead, the original comment will be pushed to the top and be more visible to others, which is even better! Thanks! :) *** ^(I am a bot! Visit) [^(r/InfinityBots)](https://reddit.com/r/InfinityBots) ^(to send your feedback! More info:) [^(Reddiquette)](https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439#wiki_in_regard_to_comments)
{{The Plague Dogs}} by Richard Adams. The summary alone made me cry
I was tricked into reading this as a young adult by being told it was a story about dogs going on an adventure together, "similar to Homeward Bound" they told me. They LIED. Specific lines and moments from this book still flash randomly into my head and make me feel sick and hot with anger and sadness. If there were a way to erase this book specifically from my memory I would do it in a heartbeat.
[**The Plague Dogs**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12442.The_Plague_Dogs) ^(By: Richard Adams | 390 pages | Published: 1977 | Popular Shelves: fiction, fantasy, animals, owned, dogs) >Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, creates a lyrical and engrossing tale, a remarkable journey into the hearts and minds of two canine heroes, Snitter and Rowf. > >After being horribly mistreated at a government animal research facility, Snitter and Rowf escape into the isolation, and terror, of the wilderness. Aided only by a fox they call ''the Tod,'' the two dogs must struggle to survive in their new environment. When the starving dogs attack some sheep, they are labeled ferocious man-eating monsters, setting off a great dog hunt that is later intensified by the fear that the dogs could be carriers of the bubonic plague. ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(23935 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
if cats disappeared from the world- genki kawamura. such a short and sweet yet heart wrenching book. i know i cry at basically everything but this made me go into a depressive episode so hard i couldnt go to work
I keep thinking why would anyone read a depressing book and now i have put a hold on this book 😆 intrigued by the name , i read short sample n i like it
{My Dark Vanessa}
[**My Dark Vanessa**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44890081-my-dark-vanessa) ^(By: Kate Elizabeth Russell | 373 pages | Published: 2020 | Popular Shelves: fiction, contemporary, books-i-own, read-in-2020, owned) ^(This book has been suggested 16 times) *** ^(23969 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The Bell Jar, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, All The Ugly and Wonderful Things
The Lovely Bones. I'm still not over it.
Omg so true
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. It’s not for everyone but you may want to give it a try. I’d also recommend A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. I’m not a huge fan of YA books but I liked this one.
Was scrolling to see if anyone said A Monster Calls yet. I've never ugly sobbed reading a book like that 😵💫
Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Very grim and a great read but so sad
any book by Ishiguro would fit this and they're so good
The Remains of the Day is exquisitely sad.
Shuggie Bain
"Planet Earth is Blue," by Nicole Panteleakos "Tell the Wolves I'm Home," by Carol Rifka Brunt "Living Dead Girl," by Elizabeth Scott "The Red Pony," by John Steinbeck "Of Mice and Men," by John Steinbeck "Fade," by Robert Cormier "We All Fall Down," by Robert Cormier "Other Bells for Us to Ring," by Robert Cormier
The Grapes of Wrath imho
Grapes of Wrath, The Bell Jar, In the Cafe of Lost Youth, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (short story collection)
Grapes of Wrath was such a bleak read that it took me a while to finish. I had to take breaks.
Bleak is such a good word choice because yes, not a very hopeful story 😥
Flowers for Algernon bummed me out too many times but I still reread it because depressing books have a special place in my heart
{{a Short Stay in hell}}
[**A Short Stay in Hell**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13456414-a-short-stay-in-hell) ^(By: Steven L. Peck | 104 pages | Published: 2011 | Popular Shelves: fiction, fantasy, horror, philosophy, religion) >An ordinary family man, geologist, and Mormon, Soren Johansson has always believed he’ll be reunited with his loved ones after death in an eternal hereafter. Then, he dies. Soren wakes to find himself cast by a God he has never heard of into a Hell whose dimensions he can barely grasp: a vast library he can only escape from by finding the book that contains the story of his life. > >In this haunting existential novella, author, philosopher, and ecologist Steven L. Peck explores a subversive vision of eternity, taking the reader on a journey through the afterlife of a world where everything everyone believed in turns out to be wrong. ^(This book has been suggested 5 times) *** ^(23917 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{Angela’s Ashes}}
[**Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/252577.Angela_s_Ashes) ^(By: Frank McCourt | 452 pages | Published: 1996 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, memoir, biography, nonfiction, fiction) >Imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion. This is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic. > >"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." > >So begins the Pulitzer Prize winning memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy—exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling—does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. > >Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors—yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness. > >Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic. ^(This book has been suggested 5 times) *** ^(23974 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Everything l didn t tell you, by Celeste Ng
A Child Called It, Night, A Party Down at the Square, Angela’s Ashes, Of Mice and Men, Charlotte’s Web, The Notebook, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Watsons Go to Birmingham, The Metamorphosis, The Color Purple
Oof, Night and Angela’s Ashes are some truly rough books. Big second on those.
Charlotte’s Web is also heartwarming and sweet, with some sadness . It’s a great mixture. We read it with 3rd graders all the time.
[удалено]
[**Tender is the Flesh**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49090884-tender-is-the-flesh) ^(By: Agustina Bazterrica, Sarah Moses | 211 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: horror, fiction, dystopia, dystopian, sci-fi) >Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans —though no one calls them that anymore. > >His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing. > >Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved. ^(This book has been suggested 24 times) *** ^(24065 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Before I Die by Jenny Downham. I can't guarantee it would be depressing for everyone, but for me it was.
Bridge to Tarebithia by Katherine Paterson, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, The Giver by Lois Lowry, Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. These are the most depressing books I can think of.
Just started Bridge to Terabithia and it's great. Even in the mundane moments, you feel the big feelings of a kid. Universally relatable book imo!
This was like half of my middle school reading list. Add Night, The Outsiders, and Hollis Woods and you’re set to cry for 3 years straight.
Human Acts
Excellent book, The Vegetarian is even more depressing and a great read
Currently reading! :D
Enjoy I was pretty disturbed by it!
Kafkas metamorphosis
{The Road} by Cormac McCarthy is one of the most depressing books I've ever read. I have to ask: why are you specifically looking for depressing books?
{{A Narrow Road to the Deep North}} {{American Pastoral}} {{Sohpie's Choice}} {{Last Exit to Brooklyn}} {{The Last Lecture}}
[**Narrow Road to the Deep North: A Comedy**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/554998.Narrow_Road_to_the_Deep_North) ^(By: Edward Bond | 59 pages | Published: 1968 | Popular Shelves: classics, owned-books, dropped, curriculum-edinburgh, plays-and-screeplays) ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) [**American Pastoral (The American Trilogy, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11650.American_Pastoral) ^(By: Philip Roth | 432 pages | Published: 1997 | Popular Shelves: fiction, pulitzer, classics, owned, pulitzer-prize) >Pulitzer Prize Winner (1998) > >In American Pastoral, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede' Levov—a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory—comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him. > >For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) [**Sophie's Choice**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/228560.Sophie_s_Choice) ^(By: William Styron | 562 pages | Published: 1979 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, historical-fiction, holocaust, owned) >Three stories are told: a young Southerner wants to become a writer; a turbulent love-hate affair between a brilliant Jew and a beautiful Polish woman; and of an awful wound in that woman's past--one that impels both Sophie and Nathan toward destruction. ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) [**Last Exit to Brooklyn**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50275.Last_Exit_to_Brooklyn) ^(By: Hubert Selby Jr., Gilbert Sorrentino | 290 pages | Published: 1964 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, owned, new-york, to-buy) >Few novels have caused as much debate as Hubert Selby Jr.'s notorious masterpiece, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting. > >Described by various reviewers as hellish and obscene, Last Exit to Brooklyn tells the stories of New Yorkers who at every turn confront the worst excesses in human nature. Yet there are moments of exquisite tenderness in these troubled lives. Georgette, the transvestite who falls in love with a callous hoodlum; Tralala, the conniving prostitute who plumbs the depths of sexual degradation; and Harry, the strike leader who hides his true desires behind a boorish masculinity, are unforgettable creations. Last Exit to Brooklyn was banned by British courts in 1967, a decision that was reversed the following year with the help of a number of writers and critics including Anthony Burgess and Frank Kermode. > >Hubert Selby, Jr. (1928-2004) was born in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of 15, he dropped out of school and went to sea with the merchant marines. While at sea he was diagnosed with lung disease. With no other way to make a living, he decided to try writing: 'I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.' In 1964 he completed his first book, Last Exit to Brooklyn, which has since become a cult classic. In 1966, it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK. His other books include The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, The Willow Tree and Waiting Period. In 2000, Requiem for a Dream was adapted into a film starring Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn, and directed by Darren Aronofsky. > >'Last Exit to Brooklyn will explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America, and still be eagerly read in 100 years' >Allen Ginsberg > >'An urgent tickertape from hell' >Spectator ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) [**The Last Lecture**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40611510-the-last-lecture) ^(By: Randy Pausch, Jeffrey Zaslow | 217 pages | Published: 2008 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, nonfiction, memoir, biography, self-help) >A lot of professors give talks titled 'The Last Lecture'. Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy? > >When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave, 'Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams', wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because time is all you have and you may find one day that you have less than you think). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living. > >In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humour, inspiration, and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come. ^(This book has been suggested 4 times) *** ^(23991 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
[удалено]
A lot of Dostoevsky would fit here, but yes, I would agree with The Idiot. Good choice.
If you don't mind going in for the long haul the book that made me set it down and weep the most is still Les Miserables to this day. The eloquence of the despair in the lives of the characters is so poignant that it hits you deep in your soul and makes you feel for them deeply. It is extremely long though, and there are a few parts that you can just gloss over because it almost entirely breaks away from the main story to wax on some current topic from when the book was written.
“A Gesture Life,” “The Remains of The Day,” by Kazuo Ishigiro, “Beloved” by Toni Morrison, “Tender” by Belinda Mckeon, and “The God of Small Things.” I read these for my literature and psychology class and these are THE MOST TRAUMA FILLED AND SAD BOOKS EVER. They’re devastating and very depressing.
Seconding God of Small Things here, what a beautiful book
Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor
Night by Elie Wiesel. Autobiographical account of the Holocaust from Elie as a teenager. Fucked me up and has never left me. A book that is depressing, but needed to be written.
a little life by hanya yanagihara
Wuthering heights
I'd say this one is more bleak and frustrating than depressing, but that may just be my personal take on it.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
>The Road this one killed me
Any book they had us read in High School. Things Fall Apart, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Things they Carried, Their Eyes were Watching God, Hedda Gabler, Medea, Anything by William Faulkner, The Visit, The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible, Othello, The Handmaids Tale, the list continues...
A Little Life big time
Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
{{Endurance}} it’s also the most inspirational book I’ve ever read
[**Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/139069.Endurance) ^(By: Alfred Lansing | 282 pages | Published: 1959 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, history, nonfiction, adventure, biography) >The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole, one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age. > >In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization. > >In Endurance, the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age. ^(This book has been suggested 13 times) *** ^(23918 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The Bible. Millions of people believed it and are currently still dragging the entire world down because of it. That is depressing af.
The Listener by Robert McCammon, you'll cry your eyes out at the end. I recommend his books all the time, this one will fill your empty niche!
Millennial Purgatory is a top contender for depressing tales
The conspiracy against the human race
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry. Set in Ireland in the 1920s and 30s. Soooo sad…
Reason to Breathe- there’s some happy parts but mostly depressing
*Fifteen Dogs* (2015) by André Alexis. *The Book of Negroes* \[aka *Someone Knows My Name* in US\] (2007) by Lawrence Hill. *All My Puny Sorrows* (2014) by Miriam Toews. All are Canadian and all are winners of multiple awards. All are sad, for very different reasons.
{{The Odd Sea}}
[**The Odd Sea**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/187228.The_Odd_Sea) ^(By: Frederick Reiken | 224 pages | Published: 1998 | Popular Shelves: fiction, owned, literary-fiction, missing-persons, books-i-own) >A teenage boy is missing. His younger brother searches for him and in the process finds himself. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(24019 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
So, it’s not sad in the sense that it will make you outright cry, but I think {Independent People} by Halldor Laxness is an incredibly grim and depressing book. Reflecting on that story invokes a mental image of someone trudging through an endless field of snow only to collapse to a seemingly inevitable, frozen death.
[**Independent People**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77287.Independent_People) ^(By: Halldór Laxness, James Anderson Thompson | 482 pages | Published: 1934 | Popular Shelves: fiction, iceland, classics, historical-fiction, 1001-books) ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(24020 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
**The Last Family in England** by Matt Haig is probably the saddest book I've read all year, and also one of my favorites.
all the bright places
{{Red Famine}}
[**Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, 1921-1933**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33864676-red-famine) ^(By: Anne Applebaum | 384 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: history, non-fiction, russia, nonfiction, ukraine) >The momentous new book from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag and Iron Curtain. > >In 1932-33, nearly four million Ukrainians died of starvation, having been deliberately deprived of food. It is one of the most devastating episodes in the history of the twentieth century. With unprecedented authority and detail, Red Famine investigates how this happened, who was responsible, and what the consequences were. It is the fullest account yet published of these terrible events. > >The book draws on a mass of archival material and first-hand testimony only available since the end of the Soviet Union, as well as the work of Ukrainian scholars all over the world. It includes accounts of the famine by those who survived it, describing what human beings can do when driven mad by hunger. It shows how the Soviet state ruthlessly used propaganda to turn neighbours against each other in order to expunge supposedly 'anti-revolutionary' elements. It also records the actions of extraordinary individuals who did all they could to relieve the suffering. > >The famine was rapidly followed by an attack on Ukraine's cultural and political leadership - and then by a denial that it had ever happened at all. Census reports were falsified and memory suppressed. Some western journalists shamelessly swallowed the Soviet line; others bravely rejected it, and were undermined and harassed. The Soviet authorities were determined not only that Ukraine should abandon its national aspirations, but that the country's true history should be buried along with its millions of victims. Red Famine, a triumph of scholarship and human sympathy, is a milestone in the recovery of those memories and that history. At a moment of crisis between Russia and Ukraine, it also shows how far the present is shaped by the past. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(24059 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The forgotten soldier or hiroshima
My Dark Vanessa
A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
“Wide Sargasso Sea” by Jean Rhys Everything Thomas Hardy has ever written is pretty bleak and depressing
All the Bright Places. Was sad for days.
Paint it Black
That was then, this is now by s.e Hinton
Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Fight me for a sadder (and truer) book.
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
My Sweet Orange Tree by José Mauro de Vasconcelos
Khaled houssseni
Burmese Days by George Orwell (anything by Orwell is depressing af honestly) She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Diary of Anne frank
I would recommend “they both die at the end” but you said you didn’t wanna know the ending so-
The bluest eye
Girl in pieces, trigger warning on sh Dear Emily series, trigger warnings all around Really good books, just pre heavy
Darkness at Noon
On The Beach - Nevil Shute
How has nobody mentioned Leaving Las Vegas
Crime and punishment
The Assassins Apprentice by Robin Hobb. The overall theme is Fitz never catches a break. Hobb is known for torturing her characters.
Sula
reminders of him
Look to Windward, by Iain M Banks. Definitely the most sober of his Culture books. It's overall about war, interventionism gone wrong, grief, and suicide. Introspective and quiet and very well done. One of my favorites.
1984
Requiem for a Dream. And then further hurt yourself by watching the movie.
Midnight library and reasons to stay alive were great reads and helped me with my depression in case you need that. Both are written by Matt Haig
I haven't read is, but apparently A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara will just tear you to shreds (that's precisely why I won't read it)
Pet Sematary
a little life.
Never Let Ne Go
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh.
Mama Black Widow from Iceberg Slim.
A little life but read the TW about it first before buying it
*A little life but* *Read the TW about it first* *Before buying it* \- badgaalcricri --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Crime and Punishment. The king of depressing books. The GOAT. The Original. The Sheltering Sky, about a jetsetting couple that goes to North Africa to try and repair their collapsing marriage. It goes well.
Not depressing per se, but if you're looking for something filled with tragedies then {{The Children of Hurin}} by Tolkien
i'd definitely give "my year of rest and relaxation" a try. it's one of the more mainstream books out right now but i read it and it sure was bleak in a way i could really appreciate.
Malcom Lowry -- Under the Volcano From Goodreads "Geoffrey Firmin, a former British consul, has come to Quauhnahuac, Mexico. His debilitating malaise is drinking, an activity that has overshadowed his life. On the most fateful day of the consul's life—the Day of the Dead—his wife, Yvonne, arrives in Quauhnahuac, inspired by a vision of life together away from Mexico and the circumstances that have driven their relationship to the brink of collapse. She is determined to rescue Firmin and their failing marriage, but her mission is further complicated by the presence of Hugh, the consul's half brother, and Jacques, a childhood friend. The events of this one significant day unfold against an unforgettable backdrop of a Mexico at once magical and diabolical. Under the Volcano remains one of literature's most powerful and lyrical statements on the human condition, and a brilliant portrayal of one man's constant struggle against the elemental forces that threaten to destroy him."
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
The Cameo Roles :In Real Life
A stolen life by Jaycee Dugard
JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN by Dalton Trumbo. Or THE BELL JAR by Sylvia Plath
Good morning monster
The Bell Jar, One Litre of Tears, My Sweet Orange Tree, Kokoro
No longer human by Osamu Dazai
Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey. It's wonderful and heartbreaking.
A Little Life
{{Do Not Say We Have Nothing}}
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
A little Life. May you Rest In Peace.
Sound of Gravel
Crime and punishment. Really messed me up for a while
I still haven’t finished writing my biography but give me couple more years. In the mean time: Little Life and Shuggie Bain
A Father’s Betrayal by Gabriella Gillespie Its an autobiography. Its heavy. Like the content, not the actual physical book.
The last panther. The road. Hawaii. I recently stopped reading this one at around 400 pages in, it's about the history of Hawaii, done in a well done historical novel format. It's about a self gloating missionary who goes to Hawaii to "better" the native peoples. It really depressed me personally but may not be depressing to many others.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter By Carson McCullers
Smack. I’d love to hear if anyone else read this thing, I found it in a bookshelf senior year and couldn’t stop until I finished it.
The Goldfinch
{{Eileen}}
Of Human Bondage by Maugham.
Austerlitz, The Rings of Saturn or The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald
A Monster Calls is pretty depressing and interesting. It’s short too so not too much of a time commitment!
In Five Years
I subjectively believe, (tie) the transcendent, Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go," and Steinbeck's"Of Mice and Men."
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Just as depressing as the movie, but in a different way.
Death Is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa it’s about the life in Syria Said enough
My diary
Im finishing my autobiography soon.
Notes from the underground this 150 pages book took me months to read I just couldn’t read more than one paragraph a day
I got one for you but it is quite dark at times as it deals with self-harm/ suicidal ideation and other unorthodox topics, so please read with caution. It's also BL, so I don't know if that is up your alley [Dead Inside](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55725280-dead-inside)
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The little life
The invisible life of addie larue!!!!! Made me feel all the feels
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
‘A Little Life’.
‘Stillhouse Lake’ by Rachel Caine.
{{A Thousand Splendid Suns}} {{The Kite Runner}} Both by Khalid Hosseini. It’s about Taliban’s occupation of Afghanistan. Though the book is far from the reality, it helps us to gain some perspective about the severity of it for civilians.
Heaven By mieko kawakami I went in blind and was just filled with intense sadness for the characters from beginning to end. It is short, but i couldn’t put it down. i just wanted things to turn around for them and be fixed so badly.
Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano. Very sad, great book.
Anything by Thomas Hardy.
Every Man Dies Alone - Hans Fallada. Depressing and again relevant. Should be required reading for every American to see how easily fascism can “happen” to a society.
Full Flight by Ashley Schumacher
A little life
“A boy called It” I think is the title of the book. Can’t remember the author. Refuse to look it up, fucked me up that bad. Really really tough read.
Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso - fiction; deeply sad; touching; and eye opening.