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 )

The scene in Jilly Cooper's Polo when Red takes Perdita's pony Terro and plays her in a second chukka and she has a massive heart attack and dies on the pitch. It's probably the book I've re-read the most number of times and it still gets me every time.

Also when Ginger dies in Black Beauty.

Also in The Odyssey when Achilles learns that Patroclus is dead and it's basically his fault. Also when old King Priam goes to beg for the body of his son Hector.

Tess of the d'Urbevilles - Tess's innocence when she tells Angel Clare what happened to her with Alec, thinking he'll understand....

The end of The Mill on the Floss.

Jacquetta yes with Ray Winstone in it? I haven't actually seen it because the book is such a total favourite of mine, and all the characters in my head are pretty much how they were in the 1980s children's BBC version so I sort of avoided it.

But it's a great book, kind of a Treasure Island-esque adventure full of derring-do, bravery, scheming bad guys, double-crossing etc, but also, a touching surrogate father figure/sweet relationship at the heart of it. The end is just so bittersweet, it's brilliant.

I noticed a lot of the books mentioned on the thread are children's books - I wonder if they stay with us more because we read them at an impressionable age - or are children's writers just more merciless with the sad storylines?

Also I think as a PP said, when you know an author is purposely pulling at your heartstrings, I don't feel as emotional - so maybe we are wiser to that sort low-down trick once we're older?

@PrivateIsles It was really good, both Ray and Aneurin were brilliant. Will have to get the book and have a read

In ‘Wonder’ after Auggie’s first day at school when he comes home and cries and asks his mum, ‘why do I have to be so ugly?’

Also,

Boxer’s death.

Piggy’s death.

The part of ‘Birdsong’ which consists of the letters home sent by the soldiers who were about to go ‘over the top’. I’d just had a baby when I read that and I howled.

Oh thank you @SgtFredColon. I found it so heartbreaking. He just accepted his brother's cruelty and that no one cared, that was how his life was.

And the bit in Great Expectations when Joe Gargery goes to visit Pip and is do self conscious and awkward that he can’t hang his hat up. Brilliant writing.

*so

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

The dog dying in I am David

The saddest book ever is Ginger's Adventures. Had me in tears every time.

I just read I am David again and had forgotten about the dog.

I am nearly crying reading this thread. Agree with @RedForShort about Kes and the PPs that said Doctor Sleep. That scene is horrifying

The Blind Assassin is the only book apart from The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas to make me cry out loud.

When you realise, as I should have done much sooner, that she is really the author. Her loneliness seeps out of the pages. She has lost everything, her sister, her love, her dignity, and she holds on to the naive hope that some day her granddaughter might reach out to her. Then you read her obituary and the granddaughter has attended her funeral. Oh, it gets me in the feels.

I fucking love Margaret Atwood.

I was going to say when little Jude, Old Father Time, takes his life and the lives of his siblings in Jude the Obscure and see someone's written it as the first response. I love that book but it is so very sad.

The ending of Tess of the Durbervilles and the part where she is rejected by Angel when he learns she's had a child. Again, love it so much but so moving.

When George shoots Lennie in Of Mice and Men. I taught that book for years and always had students crying at that part.

The ending of Mill on the Floss when Maggie and Tom find each other and hug before drowning.

I know it's a bit cliched but when Beth dies in Little Women always makes me cry.

I love emotive books so I'm sure there are lots more but these are the first to come to mind.

Just remembered the note in Jude - because we were too menny' - so sad.

Just read the thread and see I'm not very original! Going to check out the ones I don't know though!

When she kills herself in Anna Karenina. Took my breath away.
Walking Away poem by Cecil Day Lewis. I am not sure how any parent could read that through without sobbing particularly around time they start school
The end of The lLight Between the oceans. All the reviews said how it made them cry I internally scofffed. By the end I had to lock myself in the loo I was crying so much as read it on a ferry.

I have only cried at a handful of books, most of which I have seen her but i remember sobbing when Uncas died in Last of the Mohicans book. Never read it again so can't even remember the words that got me.

Ooh Remains of the Day is so poignant. Stephens is such a well drawn character who is so repressed and proper. The scenes where he can't be at his dying father's bedside because he is so consumed with his work and the way he is clearly in love with Miss Kenton and she lets him know her feelings for her but he chooses to let her meet and marry another man are tragic.

I agree about Kes. I live very close to where it was set; in Barnsley every other new road is called “Kestrel” something. Knowing the setting makes it particularly poignant.

This is s but niche, but the mountaineer Julie Tullis wrote an autobiography called “Clouds from Both Sides”. The last chapter is written by someone else, because she died on an expedition before she finished it. There is some discussion in the book about the ethics of a mother of young children repeatedly putting themselves in such a high risk situation. Even though I knew what happened to her, I was still taken aback when I got to that last chapter.

Just read thread and agree Little Lie when Willem dies. Also both Kate Atkinson’s God in Ruind and Life After Life very moving. Villette incredibly sad also cried at Birdsong. Loved Time Travellers wife DH read it after me and on the bus to work and he started crying!

Surprised at how many say Harry Potter whole thing left me entirely unmoved.

The scene in the Street Sweeper describing the Jews going into the gas chamber just killed me. Proper out loud ugly crying.

I’m glad someone has mentioned The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. The ending has haunted me since I read it in 2014 and I fear his post-apocalyptic scenario is very similar to what is actually awaiting us

Also agree with Behind the Scenes at the Museum. “I have been to the world's end and back and now I know what I would put in my bottom drawer. I would put my sisters.”

And the bit in Life After Life where Ursula is in post-war Berlin and has to kill her daughter and herself before the Soviets arrive.

A recent book that made me weep copiously is Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers. It’s about a group of gay friends in 1980s Chicago and inevitably HIV/AIDS featured heavily. Much better done than the hideous A Little Life.

The ending of Sophie’s Choice - a book I read several times before having a child but can now never read again.

I wish people wouldn’t keep mentioning The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas on these threads, though. It’s manipulative schlock which does a gross disservice to the people actually murdered at Auschwitz.

The ending of the Mayor of Casterbridge, where he wants to be buried in an unmarked grave. His dying wish is to be forgotten. I find that incredibly sad and emotive.

@iismum yes to Pawn in Frankincense

But even more in Checkmate, when Lymond and Richard are going back to Scotland, the goodbyes they make (briefly mentioned) of so many people who played such a huge part in the 6 books, and

'The pretty house in the rue de la Cerisaye, now quite gone. The empty, ruined old house in Lyon. The graves of two old women; and a strong and vigorous man; and an old and vicious one. A sister lost, a lover lost, an escutcheon taken from him, and two nations he had made temporarily his own. And Philippa.'

And then, on the boat back to Scotland, and Richard doesn't try to cheer him up and encourage him, because he realises that, for his brother, 'what lay around him were shut gates; and what lay before him was nothing.'

Even just rereading that bit - without the roller coaster of reading through all those amazing books - makes me cry...

Every time a horse dies in a Jilly Cooper book .
I know