What do you think are the saddest scenes/passages in literature? *General spoiler alert*

[QuimReaper]

For me, it's either:

• Lyra leafing Pantalaimon on the shore in The Amber Spyglass
• Will leaving to go back to his awful mother in Goodnight Mr Tom

Makes me tear up just thinking about either. What's yours?

Quotes would be much appreciated, even though I was too lazy to look any up!

(This thread will probably contain assorted spoilers, don't read on if you're going to complain about them )

Can't quote as at work... But why has nobody mentioned the bit where Miriam is going to be executed in A Thousand Splendid Suns! She is reminiscing about coming into the world as an unwanted child, a bastard, but leaving as a 'mother' and loved. And the ending where Laila is discussing the name of her soon to be baby.. Makes me cry every time..

Oh. Yes. This - I loved A Thousand Splendid Suns too.

All the posts about children's books have reminded me of one that used to make me sob when I was small, even though it had a happy ending. I can't remember the title, but it was about an elephant who found a little plant wilting in the desert, and carried water in his trunk for it. The plant grew a beautiful flower, but then one day the elephant sneezed and blew it to pieces - he was so sad. I howled.

In the end a new flower grows everywhere a petal landed, but there's just something so heartbreaking about it...

Also Zoid when she goes to the house and they are not there - and she just sits outside.

Lots of these...and 'Archipelago' by Minica Roffey, where the dog slips into the water and drowns, as he tries to hold her white ruff.....

Another one, from 'The Handmaid's Tale', when Offred is praying:

"Oh God. It's no joke. Oh God oh God. How can I keep on living?"

It just feels so hopeless. I haven't read it since becoming a mother, I don't think I could cope.

His Dark Materials is my favourite book(s) ever and I have to brace myself every time I reread it. To be able to describe loss and guilt like Pullman does when Lyra leaves Pan is just staggering.

When I was a child, The Happy Prince and the Selfish giant by Oscar Wilde and Call of the Wild by Jack London were guaranteed to have me howling.

Yes Birdsong. 'My boys, my beautiful boys' - when the chaplain watches all the men dying on the Somme

'He knew what had died in him'
Ah yes, Birdsong. I read the chapter about the first day of the Somme on a long bus journey. I had to pretend I had a nasty cold as I was sniffing and gulping back sobs...

I felt very moved many times reading The Goldfinch. Poor Theo - he just wanted his mom.

I wasn't sad at Tess' fate in Tess of the D'Ubervilles. I was livid!! It was all so grossly unfair and I have hated Hardy ever since. I'm still cross with him.

@LittleMissNaice
Matthews death in Anne of Green Gables

Yes! Came on to say this and it's on page 1. Love Anne of Green Gables. and Matthew's death has me blubbing

Back Home by the same author as Goodnight Mister Tom usually makes me cry. It does end happily, but the way she describes homesickness throughout the book is so relatable.

‘Billy Elliot’. Whenever I read thr letter from his mother aloud my voice wobbles. One of the girls in my class had lost her mother at a young age, so it made the words all the more sad.

“And now---Piertotum Locomator!” cried Professor McGonagall. And all along the corridor the statues and suits of armor jumped down from their plinths, and from the echoing crashes from the floors above and below, Harry knew that their fellows throughout the castle had done the same. “Hogwarts is threatened!” shouted Professor McGonagall. “Man the boundaries, protect us, do your duty to our school!”

and

"I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass! The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass!"

Nightjohn by Gary Paulson, based on the story of Sally Hemings, a salve owned by Thomas Jefferson. The dedication had me in tears and I cried the whole way through. It goes something like... ‘dedicated to Sammy Hemings, who never breathed a free breath her whole life’.

Ooh and ‘NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!

HP and the deathly Hallows has a few great emotional moments, and I agree about the his dark materials series. Anyone fighting for the sake of the greater good, makes me cry in a not bad way.

Pretty much the whole of lullaby’s for little criminals by Heater O’Neill, but in particular: ‘When I thought about my old friends Linus Lucas and Theo, I realized they were not really criminals either. They were like me. We were just acting out the strangest, tragic little roles, pretending to be criminals in order to get by. We gave very convincing performances.’

Yes to most of these. Although I found ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ a load of bollocks too @GloriousMystery @QuimReaper @bookworm14 - I found the idea of reframing the Holocaust to be all about the death of one privileged Aryan child deeply uncomfortable and disingenuous.

Angela’s ashes. Beginning to the end.
From the first to the last word written on those pages.

Transfixed and touched profoundly and deeply.
Tragic magic.

Liked also remember the book where the young married woman’s dh killed in random bomb in Canary Wharf think it was Maggie I Farrell? She was sitting in the tube crying and a older woman says “he wasn’t worth it love” and she said “oh he was” I was newly married to lovely man at time and it really got me.

Re Tess : perhaps we need another thread about endings that make us cross! Tess, Captain Corelli, Atonement : all have reduced my sixth formers to indignation! (and Harry Potter, obviously)

Oh yes - I was so cross about Atonement I hurled the book across the room!

I think it is a Maggie O'Farrell book (if not then Kate Atkinson) where a mum is swimming in the sea and gets into trouble and can see her child on the beach getting smaller and knowing she is going to die. This stuck with me for such a long time.

Yes that's the hand that first held mine. Maggie O Farrell.

Melvyn Bragg "A Time to Dance" when they split up and he's mourning her. Heartbreaking. Made me cry,

Oh, also The Sea by John Banville; the retired colonel (?I think?) in the seaside B&B who waits so eagerly for his son's visit and then, when it becomes clear he isn't coming, tries gamely to shrug it off. I sobbed. It's written so beautifully and mercilessly, his loneliness, hope and insistence on making excuses for the son.

Ooh and ‘NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!

HP and the deathly Hallows has a few great emotional moments

It does, but I didn't think this was one of them. To me it was not in character for Mollie-yes, she might have gone to protect Ginny, but she wouldn't have shouted that. It would have been much more sensible to have quietly taken her out with a spell from the side. Shouting that gave her the time to prepare her guard, and probably would have meant she would have been able to take Mollie out before she'd even got there. And seriously, in a big fight, everyone just let's Mollie run across the room and take her on singlehanded. Ginny would have continued fighting probably (and probably better than her Mum) if no one else, and I can't expect Mr Weasley would have also stepped back.

To me that was cliched and cringy.

Although the whole of the fight scene wasn't brilliantly written. It was a bit of a badly written melodrama to me. We're all different!

Not sure if already been mentioned, but mine is in the The Stand when Frannie and Harold are sat together playing music, thinking they are the only survivors, listening to the music of a dead world. Don't know why but that really gets to me every time.

Oh I love The Stand, as much as anyone can love a book where most of the world population dies horribly.

The "no big loss" segment where King lists through the survivors who died but not of the flu and there's a child who lost their whole family then falls through the cover on the well and dies a few hours later of shock and loneliness.

I've downloaded some books based on this thread, about to start Behind The Scenes at The Museum.