Last miserable book you read

[whatausername]

What was the last book you read that left you thinking what a miserable story it was?

For me it was Flaubert's The Three Tales. That left me in need of a glass of wine and some comedy.

I think The Little Friend is very good. The setting is really evocative - you can really feel the heat and humidity and the torpor of summer in that small town. It’s my favourite of Donna Tartt’s novels.

I’m currently reading Demon Copperhead and I think that’s great too. I’ve enjoyed most of Barbara Kingsolver’s other novels though and David Copperfield is one of my all time favourite books, so I’m definitely in the target audience.

I agree on Jude the Obscure and particularly Germinal though. Pure, unremitting misery.

Also Germinal. Good god.

YES. Or rather OUI. I read it on holiday once, in France - a mistake on so many levels.

I read Jude the Obscure as a teenager and couldn't get into it (I did finish it) - what a miserable read. Same goes for The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne which I also read years ago.

I seem to always choose dark/miserable books so maybe it says something about me, but I’m generally upbeat I think! So Shuggie Bain, Hamnet (loved it, going to see the play soon), We are called to rise, My Dark Vanessa, American Dirt, Stone Blind, Silence of the Girls. Loved The Song of Achilles and Circe by Madeline Miller, though not really miserable I suppose. The one book that is just too sad to read, even for me, is Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

Oh... some other thread reminded me of a book that made me feel misery all along (not the last one I read, but one I wouldn't want to read again): "Villette", from Charlotte Brönte. Broke my heart, left me in a dark place.

Agreed Sorrow & Bliss. I gave up after 1/3 and couldn’t understand the hype.

But it's so unspeakably brilliant! Without spoilering it for anyone who hasn't read it -- actually, come to think of it, there's nothing I can say about it that doesn't involve spoilers, so will desist. Only to say that if you compare Lucy's situation near the beginning of the novel, when she's deprived of all family and support for reasons she chooses never to disclose to the reader with her situation at the end, there's a lot for her to be thankful for...?

Walk me to the corner by Anneli Furmark. It's a graphic novel. I loved the artwork and the story is so bittersweet.

Damn, got that in the TBR pile.

How To Turn Back Time by Matt Haig. Made it to the end and thought the title for the reader should be Kill Me Now.

Hamnet - on the fence about this one. Read it the first time and was meh, read it again and loved it. Three hundred odd pages to get to the point, though....if ever a book was ripe for a Stella Gibbons style parody it's that one with all the rural misery.

Same. I stupidly followed it with a diary of a parole officer which was abandoned due to being skin crawlingly bleak, must hate myself at times. It drove me straight to the Disney channel which is extreme for me. I think I had a week of Pixar classics too. Why, why, why!!!

Hamnet. I loved the writing but it made me cry. I was on the tube at the time so I felt both sad and embarrassed!

Does anyone find it more of a struggle to read sad books since they had children? I think becoming a mother has made me a bit soft. The idea of reading some of the sad but wonderful books I read years ago (pre-children) makes me shudder. I don’t think I’d ever get over A Fine Balance if I read it now!

After the end Claire Mackintosh

@DressingRoom Hahaha, I hear you, yes... But, come on: all those trials and tribulations and then...

Lapvona. God what a weird and dark book. By same author as Eileen and Year of Rest and Relaxation. I love all her books but you’d never think they were written by the same person.

They’re a whole LL thread so I won’t rehash my comments on that but suffice is to say by the end I felt like the author was trolling the reader. It was like “ and then they got raped…. And then run over…. And then a tornado came and swept their body into the sky and impaled it on a stake… and then the stake caught on fire…. But then they weren’t dead so they got burned alive”. It just got ridiculous.

One of the best books I’ve ever read.

The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex...damp, cold and awful depiction on life on a lighthouse... Honestly don't bother! 😩

I agree with The Road. I sobbed for 3 hours after I finished it. That was years ago. I still don't like thinking about how I felt after reading that book. It sounds dramatic but I almost wish I'd never read it.

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell, The Song of Achilles and Circe by Madeline Miller but the one that made me cry all the way through was Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman! 😭

The Last Tudor by Philippa Gregory
First Jane has a really shit time of it and gets locked up in the Tower and killed, then Catherine gets locked up and dies, then Mary gets locked up and so does her husband and he dies.
I should have known really. I knew what happened to them.

Oh God yes. Horrible horrible book. And he doesn’t even have Philippa Gregory’s excuse: he CHOSE for that to be the outcome.

I wouldn't call Hamnet, Silence Of The Girls or Women Of Troy miserable, I'd say they were moving. Loved all three of them, and The Poisonwood Bible, which I found a lot of wry, dark humour in.

The Road was the single most hideous book I ever read and I will never forgive Cormac McCarthy for the scene of the group with the heavily pregnant woman with them, then shortly after the same group spit-roasting a baby. @CurlyhairedAssassin, I devoutly wished I'd never read it!

Queenie was awful because of the relentless sexual violence she subjected herself to. There was so much to admire in the book, but her endless debasement and abuse turned my stomach. I remember a friend of mine in our twenties behaved similarly after she was raped. She invited self-punishment. It was heartbreaking.

Madame Bovary. She wasn't great at making good choices was she?

The Dig - Cynan Jones. Until I read this book, I had lived in blissful ignorance about badger baiting. Both that it still goes on to the extent it does and what it entails.

Bleak.