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’m just reading North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell with DD. I love it, but I’d forgotten how bleak it is. The main character has been miserable the whole book so far, except for the time she was briefly happy which was only allowed so she could be heartbreakingly removed from the place that makes her happy. Now she’s finally found a friend, but the friend is dying of tuberculosis. Happy days.

Hard Times by Dickens is a bit like that. Poor Stephen.

L'Assommoir by Zola is fantastically miserable and squalid, plus extra pretentiousness points

Thank you - I have added lots to my wishlist (including Germinal!) and ordered Out, Growing up in the Gorbals and Secret River.

While I wait for them to arrive I'm rereading Night Waking to see if you're all right So far I still think she has it tough (sorry) primarily due to the extreme sleep deprivation. DS is now 8 but I still feel lucky to be able to go to bed and just sleep.

" My Life Before Barry ; Special Edition "

Joke BTW for serious readers !

Two pence to cross the Mersey by Helen Forester

A biography about a young girl and her large family living in compete and utter poverty in Liverpool in the 30’s

No benefits as such , dirty housing , freezing conditions
Having to basically beg for handouts at offices
Baby left to sleep on metal cot without mattress

It just made me think oh my god these poor kids , I think I always had images of 30’s / 40’s being all apple pie and sweetness but really it was so so tough for slum dwellers.

The mother in this book had some sort of medical / mental breakdown and was unable to care for the kids and the father had been made unemployed , so without a support network things just went really downhill

It’s a book that’s stuck with me for many years .

@AnneKipanki waheeeey! To be honest I don't know how any of you survived.

@LoadsaBlusher me too, one of those ones where you feel weary to your bones just reading it. There was a bit in one of the follow-up books where teenaged Helen gets seriously ill and is examined by a doctor; when they see how close she is to dying of starvation, the doctor years a ztrip off the mum. The mum just lies and claims Helen only wants to eat sweets

Is this The Liverpool mice follow up ? I’ve never read the sequels ... may order on kindle

There are a few follow-ups. I can't remember which one but they're all equally good I think.

at Liverpool 🐀🐀🐀🐁🐀🐁

The Short Day Dying by Peter Hobbs

Those suggesting Road to Nab End, is that the one where a sister got a grammar school place but the uniform cost /tram fare made it unaffordable? And the mum took the child narrator on “holiday” to Blackpool where she prostituted herself for a week to help the family finances?

"Sunset Song" by Lewis Grassic Gibbon - for some North East Scotland farming misery.

You beat me to it Ursaminor, its one of my favourites though.
Im haunted by reading Primo Levi at far too young an age, i was allowed to read my parents books.
For real misery, On the Beach by Nevil Shute is good as is A Town Like Alice

Sunset Song is so Slooooow though.

It's lovely though, that last page had me sobbing into my pillow one night!

Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel

Wuthering Heights

Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell. about grinding "respectable" poverty.

Not novels but the Helen Forrester books about growing up in Liverpool in the 30s.

[quote JesusInTheCabbageVan]**@LoadsaBlusher me too, one of those ones where you feel weary to your bones just reading it. There was a bit in one of the follow-up books where teenaged Helen gets seriously ill and is examined by a doctor; when they see how close she is to dying of starvation, the doctor years a ztrip off the mum. The mum just lies and claims Helen only wants to eat sweets [/quote]
Yes, that mother was horrible. Putting Helen down constantly so she ends up with very low self worth, even though she is really the backbone of the family. Father very passive and ineffectual. Helen deserved a medal for keeping that family going IMO

A little life by Hanya Yanagihara

The Lonliness of the Long Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe. actually a collection of stories rather than a novel, all set in late 50s working class Nottingham.

I was thinking of the Pennington books by K. M. Peyton about a 1970s young concert pianist from a difficutl background who ends up in prison but eventually marries his girlfriend Ruth who is pregnant. Pennington's Heir, that particular book is called and i remember when the baby is born and money so tight Ruth is running out for nappies for the him and they live on egg and toast. not a "Poverty novel" per se, but grinding poverty certainly a part of it.

Heaven (Casteel series) by V. C. Andrews. very poor often hungry family living in a shack in the Virginia mountains.

Janey by Bernard Ashley. Young Adult novel I read in the 90s. Though published mid-80s, methinks. a young schoolgirl is an aspiring gymnast who wants to join her school gym club but cannot afford the fees. She lives with her crooked older brother.

A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney (sorry, again, not novel but play)

Also, re: plays on poverty- Rita, Sue and Bob Too, Up the Junction, Poor Cows

The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks (first in a trilogy)

Oh and a lovely set of 4 books (no longer in print but can be found on sites like e-bay) by Maisie Mosco about Jewish immigrants arriving in Manchester in 1900s and living in poverty there until they start to work their way up. I think was meant to be a trilogy (with the last ending in the 1960s and the 6 day war in Israel) but Mosco seemed to pen a 4th book soem time later (almost as an afterthought?) set in the 1980s of the same family (its' surviving generations that is)

Mine are all a bit low brow compared to some of the other suggestions as I'm not really a great reader, but I remember being distraught reading Her Benny when I was in my early teens.
Also at about the same age I read A Kestrel For A Knave and I've never been able to bring myself to watch the film as its too sad.
I think someone has already mentioned How Green Was My Valley, but I agree that is very moving.
I've recently read the books that Call The Midwife is based on and enjoyed them much to my surprise as I found the tv series far too twee (especially the later series that aren't based on the original books.) Ok, they're not great literature by any means, but I think they give quite a moving picture of life at the time. On a vaguely similar theme I've just ordered a copy of The Citadel which I first read donkey's years ago and recall enjoying. I think AJ Cronin also wrote some other novels about hardships in the Welsh valleys so if I like The Citadel second time around I might look into his other books.

Angela's Ashes and A Fine Balance.

And a non-fiction one, Tightrope by Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times about heartland America.

Some other Rainbow - John McCarthy - true story about someone being a hostage

The Wall - John Lanchaster - fictional story, about someone guarding The Wall