Most heartbreaking lines from a book ever...

HDM absolutely, I read that when I need a good cry.

Ditto The Velveteen Rabbit, and The Railway Children is guaranteed to reduce me to a sobbing mess.

But then there's the bit at the end of Seven Little Australians which is both melodramatic and heartbreaking. I can't hear Abide With Me without thinking of it.

Aside from all of these though, Family Life by Elizabeth Luard is about her life and family and the end of that is devastating. It's so beautifully written but crushing...it gets me every time.

Oh oscha I have been thinking of that book during this whole thread! I read that bit with such a lump in my throat, and it’s really stayed with me.

Well yes, you have to give him his due!

He does do a good death does Stephen

Yes, well done, and now I'm trying not to start crying again! 😭😭😭😭

Yay go me...

That's it!

I havent read that one for years i gave it away as i didnt really enjoy it...but i am thinking i need to revisit

Oh god

It that insomnia?

"The ticking"
"What ticking?"
"Never mind, it's stopped," he said, and smiled brilliantly.
Then Ralph stopped, too.

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Oh gosh i don't remember

Remind me of vaguely what it says...

Yes Rufus, which is the one where the ticking stops? I was discussing it with a friend yesterday, and like a bloody food I started blubbing.

There’s a line in Year of Wonders (by Geraldine Brooks-incredible book about the plague village) which goes something like:

He died quietly, as babies do.

Fucking hell. It’s too much 😥

count

Oh but some of his stuff is heart breaking isnt it

Exactly Better. You expect certain things from Steven King, but sadness isn't one of them.

Yes what better said

I understand completely what you are saying, Floral - I avoid stories of unmitigated gloom myself! But I think the reason most of the passages on here have resonated with a large number of us is that they are sad passages from otherwise "balanced" books with both light and shade.

Yes I suppose it's all horses for courses .

Floral - I think this might be a "two kinds of people" thing. Some people find it easier to process historical information as fact/documentary, and some people find it easier to process it through dramatisation.

If you're a fact/documentary person then your imagination and empathy will do the work for you; other people need more immersion so a film like Amistad or Schindler's List does the job.

I'm not talking about sad , I'm talking about books about abuse and the holocaust and such like , we all know it occurs , we all know all about it so that's the type of thing I don't inflict on myself .

I used to think Beloved was about slavery and emancipation. Then I had children. And now I know it's about motherhood and faithful love. So here are the lines that catch in my throat, from the first understanding and the second.

"It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too."

"Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one."

I agree totally that reading should not be a chore: I've just abandoned a book after reading about one third and just thinking ' this is slow, more editing was called for'. and I also agree that most books being discussed on here are not totally sad . In fact most are rather uplifting. I can't think of many books which have no elements of sadness or tragedy in them. Can't remember who said it but isn't it the case that the best comedy has an element of pathos in it? I agree that loss and love are 2 sides as are many aspects of life. Some great books were written to show up social ills, so in the end we hopefully behave better towards our fellow humans.

The thing is that most of the books we're discussing are not uniformly sad or pessimistic - Wolf Hall, for instance (that I quoted) is absolutely not! It is exciting, wonderfully written, very funny in parts but also does not shy away from the tragic parts of life such as death and loss. Good or great literature reflects life and since illness, injustice and death are part of normal, lived experience, it often features in its pages. (Not always, of course - writers can choose to write comedy and avoid the darker parts of life and these can still be great books - the works of Jane Austen, for example.)

However, in the end, the sad parts of books are a reaffirmation of the best things in life. Grief and loss are simply the other side of love - they are two sides of the same coin. To enjoy one, you have inevitably to endure the other. Great books (or even just good ones) imitate life and allow you to experience the same - full - range of emotions.

Reading should not be a chore, so if someone wants to avoid distressing topics, why should they not?

We all have things we avoid, I think. I cannot read Holocaust fiction. I have read, and will continue to read, survivor testimonies and other factual books about the Holocaust, but I am not going to read fictional books about it. I am very bad at explaining this, so apologies in advance, but I don't see the point (not quite the right word, can't find a better one) of heartbreaking fictional stories when the actual facts are heartbreaking and appalling enough.

I can live with that .