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 )

I'm glad someone has mentioned Rilla of Ingleside. I loved all the Anne books as a child- still do. And I always sob my way through Rilla.

Also: Lee Scoresby and Hester
Beth in Little Women
Goodnight Mr Tom
The Outsiders: Stay gold.

One I haven't seen anyone else mention: "Tell me if the lovers are losers" by Cynthia Voigt, when Hildy dies.
And I always well up a little at "I love you to the moon... and back." In Guess How Much I Love You?

Is Rilla of Ingleside the one where she throws the cake Into the river because she is so shamed by carrying it? I love that bit!

We Were Young and at War follows the diaries and letters of 16 young people in different countries in WW2. One is Yura Ryabinkin in Leningrad. It starts off with him in 1941, all positive, involved with activities at the Palace of Young Pioneers - but his life becomes smaller and smaller, not going out much, increasingly obsessed with food as there's less and less of it through the Siege of Leningrad and trust breaks down, energy goes, and in the end the diary just trails off mid-sentence after his mother and sister are evacuated, too weak to carry him with them and he is too weak to walk by himself, and I was reading it in the middle of the canteen at work and just cried.

Oh, @QuimReaper, I was only responding to questions from pissed extroverts on the last tube, who saw the bookshop bag (I think it was the Islington Waterstones?) and came over and started asking! I didn’t think they’d believe me for a second — apart from anything else, I’d have had to read an entire hefty hardback in under an hour by the time I met them. But they swallowed everything, and then I started making things up. By the time we got to Brixton I might have got slightly carried away.

All my English friends find the end of Winnie the Pooh (is it The House at Pooh Corner’?) desperately sad. The bit about a boy and his bear forever playing? Or am I confusing two? There’s another bit about ‘being sure of you’ that also causes mass weeps. I don’t get it.

For DH, one of the saddest scenes ever is the end of the Victorian plot of AS Byatt’s Possession, where the love child of the two poets unwittingly meets her biological father but forgets to tell her ‘aunt’ ( who is really her mother).

Brilliant thread
Ginger in black beauty always got me. I don’t think I would be able to read it now as a horse owner.

@Shalom23

"that moment in Beloved. I had the amazing experience of meeting Toni Morrison and asked her if Seth did the right thing. She answered "It was the right thing to do but she didn't have the right to do it". That response makes me cry ."

What an amazing experience! That gave me goosebumps to read her response.

Rose of Sharon breastfeeds a starving homeless man in The Grapes of Wrath. I was literally sobbing. Also, the ending of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Also, sobbing.

Oh god, Anna Karenina! sobs. What a fool. Greatest novel ever written. No more spoilers than this please for those that haven't read it. My mum spoiled the major plot point for me by telling me a story of a friend who spoiled it for her...saying "can you believe it!" I could. I was 14. I had not yet read it.

I am going to have to reread Possession, I loved it.

BertrandRussell, no the one with the cake is one of the earlier ones, maybe Rainbow Valley, when they are all young. Rilla of Ingleside starts in 1914 and Rilla is 14, it follows her teenage years as all her brothers go off to the war.

Oh yes....Not sure if I can face that one again!

I finished Behind The Scenes At The Museum literally ten minutes ago, downloaded it a few days ago after seeing it mentioned on the thread a few times.

I cried.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum is my absolute favourite book of all time.

I've downloaded Life After Life, going to start it at the weekend while DD is at her dance exams and I'm sitting waiting hours for her.