Your favourite novels about grinding hardship

[JesusInTheCabbageVan]

Apparently these really cheer me up. I'm not talking about misery/abuse memoirs, but things like the following:

Cold Mountain, Charles Frazer
The Good Earth, Pearl S Buck
Gap Creek, Robert Morgan
Night Waking, Sarah Moss.

Do you know what I mean? Books that make you think, 'I'm so glad I don't have to work that hard. I'm sure I'll remember more in a bit.

Follow the River: A novel by James Alexander Thom

A million little pieces by James Frey, is utterly miserable, and also true. I'm not sure I am ever face reading it again.

@IHaveBrilloHair

Helen Forrester, Twopence to cross the mersey.

Loved that book

Oh yes @SonEtLumiere . Nearly finished and have really enjoyed it but utterly miserable.

Grapes of Wrath
Down and Out in Paris and London
Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

None really. I grew up in poverty. No need to find glamour in that.

Yes to The Poisonwood Bible.

The Book of Lost Things. It's a fairytale for grown ups but not a happy one.

The Orphan Master's Son, it's a fictional account of life in North Korea. It's as jolly as it sounds.

Another one coming in to say Helen Forrester.

Jean de Florette and the sequel Manon of the Springs by Marcel Pagnol

Beautifully written misery

A really obscure one I read about on here, called Down the Common. I found it totally gripping. Yet not much happens

Just looking these up.

@ProbablyFault 99p on kindle so I have got that now.

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell is a good one. Not everyone in it is grindingly poor, though. Does that rule it out? Good on union action and striking in Victorian mill towns, written from an undeniably middle class perspective but with good understanding.

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold is brilliant if you like non-fiction, telling the life stories of the victims of Jack the Ripper and focusing on the poverty and lack of life choices that left the women vulnerable to victimization, without focusing on their murders - completely anti-sensationalist and anti-prurient.

I second Jude the Obscure

Nooooo! It's too grim, and too sad.

The God of Small Things, though ... very sad, but also very funny and absolutely beautiful

Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

Dolores Claybourne by Stephen king
Colour Purple.

Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Once in a House on Fire, Andrea Ashworth

@JesusInTheCabbageVan
"Ooh, Zola. But it's the 13th of a 20 novel series - you trying to help me or kill me??"

It works as a stand alone novel - no need to torture yourself with the other 19! Give it a go, I think you'll love it.

Grapes of wrath

The Road, Cormack McCarthy
Tess of the d'urbervilles
The book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill
Lord of the Flies

Definitely A Fine Balance.

Also Tess of the d’Ubervilles.

James Frey made a lot of A million little pieces up, if it helps.

Some great recommendations here, thank you!

A Painted House, John Grisham

OP, Nightwaking is a satire about the self-recrimination of a certain kind of middle-class mother who never feels good enough. The protagonist is Oxford-educated, lives with her family on on a private island her husband inherited, has a sought-after research fellowship, and ends the novel being hired by a Scottish university for a job she wants. I mean, she’s married to a man who doesn’t pull his weight, cooks some disgusting meal and is driven half-mad by looking after two small children, but it’s hardly really ‘grinding hardship’, is it?

Agree with @apapuchi , Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy .