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.

I did like Night Waking, in fact I've loved Sarah Moss' other books too, but I remember thinking at the time "FGS, my life is harder than yours love"
It was a particularly rough period for me, but still...
And the name Moth just grated on me, intensely
Very good book though.

A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Another vote for Love on the Dole (Walter Greenwood)

Not a novel, but Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier is a good 'hardship' read and in my view, as readable as any novel.

Another book in the same vein as Night Waking is Weathering by Lucy Wood.
Her other book Diving Belles is good too.

Out and Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino
Both are officially crime thrillers but are set in a haunting atmosphere of everyday hardship. Out features 4 women trying to make ends meet working in a boxed lunch factory, each with different problems. Grotesque has a section on a Chinese immigrant attempting to create a new life in Japan and a final chapter on a troubled young woman working as a prostitute in Tokyo. Very graphic and disturbing at times but never gratuitous like those misery/pain memoirs. Everything is relevant to the plot and the books leave you pensive long after you've finished them.

A PP mentioned Long Road Home by Rose Tremain, also enjoyed that a lot as it's so London-centric. Changes your perspective about the city and features characters that are caricatures of people you know. Brick Lane by Monica Ali is another favourite with similar themes.

Educated by Tara Westover

Also The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls.

The Jungle is the most depressing book I have ever read. But one of my favourites

Another vote for Germinal. Also L’Assommoir is brilliant - about a descent into alcoholism and poverty.

Giants In The Earth by Ole Rolvaag - for Laura Ingalls Wilder fans - is fascinating. A novel describing some of the same real events in her books - the locusts, blizzards, the sod houses - but from an adult Norwegian immigrant perspective.

Yy to Grapes of Wrath and A Fine Balance.I will never forget the ending of GOW even though I read it thirty years ago.
Strumpet City by James Plunkett is a novel set in Dublin in 1913 during the lockout (strike).

Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell. I still think about it a lot, and I last read it years ago.

The Nether World - by George Gissing.

Place marking

Try Cricket (A tale of humble life) by Silas Hocking

It's set in the 19th century, was one of my great aunt's Sunday school prizes and I seem to remember needing a whole box of tissues I cried so much reading it.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (sp?).The film not so much. Outcast, brainwashed children doomed to a life of literal sacrifice.

And one I read at High School and am only starting to identify with now. Le Père Goriot by Balzac.

Good Night Mr.Tom, as a PP said, too.

Out is brilliant @CoffeeDay . Reread that recently 👍🏻

@Sgtmajormummy I read Le père goriot at university as well! Forgot about that one!

And yes to goodnight Mr Tom. Has anyone read the other evacuee one by the same author called Back Home? One of my all time favourite books.

@Etinox I agree Zola is a wonderful writer, so vivid. And a good man to speak out for Dreyfus.

As others have said, George Orwell did this so well. I immediately thought of "a Clergyman's Daughter". I read it years and years ago but I still think about it sometimes.
I'm late getting to this one, because I also thought of "The Five". Strongly recommended.

Thought of another:
The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi. Set in underworld gangster Cardiff in the ‘60s. This was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

I agree about Wild Swans. When I finished it I declared "I won't complain about anything ever again for the rest of my life!" It turned out I was wrong about that but I will never forget the awfulness.

Another one that has stayed with me was one of the Call the Midwife books. I forget which one. There was a lady who had been in the workhouse and who was irreparably damaged by it, and an old man who had gone terrible things in the Boer war and had a miserable old age. Absolutely harrowing.

These Is My Words by Nancy Turner

factual Into the abbys jack London
best fiction one the ragged trousered philanthropists tressle
most heartbreaking a child called it