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 )

@Fluffiest just read the half blood prince and it made me cry when Dumbledore died too! I’m still shocked, bit late to the party 😂 the film of the time travellers wife broke me too

Little Match Girl.

The hanging of Tess in Tess of the D'Urbervilles 😢

I read 'Leaving Time' by Jodi Picoult when I was pregnant with DC2 and DD was the same age as the little girl in the book (in the mother's timeline). The ending had me absolutely sobbing.

"'I loved you.' I gasp. 'So, so much. But not very well.'"

Patrick Gale’s Notes from an Exhibition, beautifully written death of a young character, when the real life author’s brother died that way

I still can't read the little match girl @loopytiles. It broke my heart as a child.

Thanks quimreaper, I will check out the film.
I was worried it wouldn’t be very good and somehow spoil the book, but from what you’ve said, it sounds great.

I'm reading His Dark Materiels at the moment and the Lee and Hester bit is definitely heartbreaking. I'm not quite at the Lyra leaving Pan bit yet.
In Life Of Pi when he gives the alternate explanation at the end. The realisation of what actually happened creeping in was awful.

Parts of A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry) and especially the ending, were completely devastating. I’m not a big crier generally, but I was doing proper gulping sobs.

(I’m afraid I find Jude the Obscure quite funny - almost Monty Python does Hardy.)

Beloved, by Toni Morrison. When she sees the slave masters coming and kills her baby rather than let them take her. "She was my best thing"

I’m a total emotional incontinent at the best of times so cry loads in books but the ones that stand out for me:

1. Goodnight Mr Tom when Willie realises the baby is dead

1. A little life when Willem dies

1. A song for Issy Bradley when Issy dies, even though you know from reading the cover that it’s a novel about death/bereavement the bit where she’s in bed so desperately ill wishing her mum would come and her mum is busy doing jobs and doesn’t realise she’s dying made me howl like nothing else on Earth.

1. A monster calls - the last 1/4. I was totally broken by it.

passmethecrisps I couldn't cope with The Smartest Giant in Town at all to begin with!

The Fault in Our Stars is a tearjerker for me. Augustus holding his pre funeral.

There's a book that got mentioned on one of these threads before, I don't remember what it was called but if anyone knows I'd so appreciate a name - it was about a woman who I think was a doctor, going into a gas chamber. She had no kids herself, but there was a little boy there too in the group, and the line the MNetter referenced was about how in that space and time for their last moments she became a mother as they held hands and she tried to comfort him.

Any ideas what book this is?

In the Remains of the Day the moment when the butler, Stephens realises he has wasted his life serving a worthless master who he had previously admired rather than marrying the housekeeper he is in love with.

“Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

Yy to so many here. Charlotte; the end of tom’s midnight garden - “But, you know, he put his arms right round her and he hugged her goodbye as if she were a little girl.” Teddy’s death in “a god in ruins.” The childrens’ death in “Jude the obscure” didn’t make me cry so much as decide not to read Hardy any.more.

But probably the most destroyed I get is reading the end of “The homeward bounders” by Diana Wynn’s jones. Just Jamie, all alone, holding all things together just because he is so totally alone. Crying now just typing this!

OMG OP this is a rough thread.

God, loads and loads of these books made me howl. But I realise reading the thread that I have blocked out so many details of them! Dumbkedore dying is the last howling I remember. Also I covered an English lesson where they were reading the boy in the striped pyjamas and the students told me what happened-I was so taken aback I wept in front of them.

@TalkToMeAboutSocialWorkPlease I think that might be from Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. It’s about an American Chinese family and there’s lots in there about the Chinese looking children not fitting in at their very white school. I can’t quite place the quote but it’s really familiar and I read that book quite recently.

Yes I think it might be. I read that recently and found it so so sad (and I did judge the parents fairly harshly). I loved her Little Fires Everywhere too which also has sad bits.

Our novel in 4th class was Black Beauty and I don't think I have ever recovered from the death of Ginger. I also cried when David Copperfield said goodbye to his mother for the last time - her holding the baby in her arms. That was in second year in secondary school so I had the sense to read ahead so I got the tears out. Still teared up though. Tbh I resented Dickens deliberately tugging my heartstrings like that - but he is not my favourite author (had to read an awful lot of him)

I cried when Toby rejects Jane in the L Shaped Room - I was 18. But now I'm with The Bolter quoted wonderfully above. She'd have got over him.

I did a class on satire recently and cried all over again at the death of Boxer.

And yes the death of Beth and The Little Match Girl

The little match girl. It's just so very sad.

When Balthamos learns of Baruch's death in The Amber Spyglass.

When you find out that Bruno is just a figment of Leo's imagination in A History of Love

When Beverly dies in ^A Winter's Tale
^
When Lee Scoresby and Hester die in The Subtle Knife

When Fred dies in Deathly Hallows

When Manchee dies in The Knife of Never Letting Go

(I think I read too many sad books)

Jane Eyre when her lovely friend dies 😩

And I clasped my arms closer around Helen; she seemed closer to me than ever; I felt as if I could not let her go; I lay with my face hidden on her neck. Presently she said in the sweetest tone,‹

"How comfortable I am! That last fit of coughing has tired me a little; I feel as if I could sleep: but don't leave me, Jane; I like to have you near me." "I'll stay with you, dear Helen: no one shall take me away."

@AndromedaPerseus I love that line. He's so stoic up until that point.

@PrivateIsles Is that the same Moonfleet that was on tv a few years ago? Didn't know it was a book, I only watched it to ogle Aneurin Barnard.

Saddest scene ever was the death of Severus Snape, I sat there and cried

Lots of people have already have mentioned Lyra leaving Pan - proper sobbing. Such an amazing description.
Also Lee and Hester dying from that series.

And Night eyes from the Farseer books 😭

absentmindedwoman - that sounds like a bit in Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman (another devastating book).

@dementedmaRue? That really got me. Especially as she sings to her. Then later on when Prim dies...